Bidspirit auction | Horst Antes ”Sphinx” Gouache on

Horst Antes ”Sphinx” Gouache on Paper - Hand-signed by the artist in the upper right.  Provenance: Galerie Veranneman label on the reverse. Sotheby's catalog page and receipts included. Christie's Auction Estimate included.    Image: 14 1/2” x 22” Frame: 31” x 38”   Condition: The painting is in good condition.      Artist Bio: Horst Antes (b. 1936) studied at Karlsruhe under HAP Grieshaber, the major German woodcut artist, and became a leading figure of Neue Figuration, the German postwar return to the figure. Around 1960 he arrived at the Kopffussler — literally ”head-footer” — a figure reduced to a large head with limbs sprouting directly from it, little or no torso, usually in strict profile with a single staring eye and disproportionate hands and feet. Fully developed by 1963 and extended into sculpture that year, it dominated his work for two decades and is the motif he is universally identified with, rendered flattened, hieratic and heavily outlined in dense earthy or acid color. From 1972 trips to Native American reservations brought Hopi kachina figures into the vocabulary, visibly related to the totemic Kopffussler.