A self-taught artist, Georg Schrimpf participated in the seminal Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925. Among the twelve works he exhibited, four were portraits of children—a genre that captured his imagination throughout his short life. Despite his socialist leanings, Schrimpf is considered part of the more “conservative,” predominantly southern German contingent of New Objectivity artists, due to the many classicizing motifs in his work that evoke the Italian Renaissance. In Child Portrait (Peter in Sicily), the artist portrays his younger son Peter during the family’s Sicilian sojourn in the fall of 1924. The boy’s sandy complexion, his prodigiously adult mannerisms, and the inclusion of a sweeping landscape view as backdrop are informed by Italian Masters from Giotto to Raphael. The muted palette, sharp orthogonals of the cubic Mediterranean architecture, and unsentimental, simplified depiction of background elements also reveal more contemporary Italian influences; having lived in Italy in 1921–1922, Schrimpf would have been familiar with the Pittura Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting) of artists including Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. Indeed, the latter would write a short monograph on Schrimpf in 1924 and anoint him “a leading representative of Europe’s new ‘mystical painting."

Georg Schrimpf was one of the leading representatives of New Objectivity, the new realism that dominated German art during the Weimar Republic (1919–33). Like many of his contemporaries, the former Expressionist artist turned to figuration after World War I, gaining broad recognition with his neoclassical mode of rendering the “real.” Influenced by Italian artists of the past and present (he moved to Italy in 1924), Schrimpf’s idealized portraits, still lifes, and landscapes seem to transcend time and historical circumstances. Here, the boy’s intense gaze situates him somewhere between child and adulthood. His almost grown-up face is contrasted with the physical appearance of a baby in a romper, thus rendering the image uncanny.

Wall label, 2021.