.
Carl Spitzweg
5th February 1808 – 23th September 1885
Carl Spitzweg was born on 5th of February in 1808 in Unterpfaffenhofen, Bavaria. Although trained as a chemist, he discovered quite early his talent for drawing and his affinity with art. Spitzweg travelled extensively during his lifetime and the impressions formed by his travels greatly influenced his work. Shortly after completing his studies in pharmaceutics in 1832, he visited Italy. It was particularly in the cities of Florence, Rome, and Naples that he discovered the many significant works of Western culture which were to leave a permanent imprint on him.
A severe case of dysentery in 1833 strengthened his resolve to abandon his career as a chemist and he proceeded to commit himself solely to his painting. In June 1835, he became a member of the Munich Art Association and travelled that same year to southern Tirol with the landscape painter Eduard Schleich, the Elder.
In 1839 he completed his first painting entitled ''The Poor Poet'. Although this recurring motif would later be considered his most well-known body of work, the painting was not accepted at this time by the jury of the Munich Art Association.
As regards his graphic production, the first publication in 1844 of his own illustrations in the Munich weekly paper 'Fliegende Blätter' is considered quite significant. His visits to the Industrial Exposition in Paris and the World's Fair exhibition in London in 1851 were his first contact with the Oriental scenes which would begin to inform his work.
To the deserving painter were bestowed numerous honours during the second half of Spitzweg's lifetime: in 1865 the Bavarian Royal Merit Order of St. Michael was conferred upon him, and in 1875 he was named an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts.
Carl Spitzweg died on 23th of September in 1885 and was entombed in the historic South Cemetery in Munich.
He leaves behind a body of work dedicated to the townspeople who inhibit his genre scenes, and with acute and pointed, but never ill-natured humour he portrays the everday bourgeois life of his time.
Lit: Siegfried Wichmann, Carl Spitzweg. Verzeichnis der Werke, Gemälde und Aquarelle, Stuttgart: Belser, 2002.
Carl Spitzweg
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1068
Winterauktionen 25.–26.11.2022
Grima, Andrew
1921 Rome - 2007 Gstaad.
Amethyst pendant brooch from the Omega «Jeu d'Or» collection.
London and Biel 1972. Yellow gold 18k. Oval pendant intertwined into an eight with textured gold frame, centrally set with one natural amethyst crystal weighing approx.
Can also be worn as a brooch.
H 7,8,
Andrew Grima was the most popular jewellery designer in the fashion metropolis of London during the «Swinging Sixties», the time of the miniskirt and Beatlemania. Popular with the jet set and appointed purveyor to the court by the British royal family, his unusual organic creations rapidly conquered post-war fashion. He turned away from the decorative bow and floral designs of classic jewels and chose huge crystals and roughly worked gemstones that look like «objets trouvés». Grima's precious individual creations were colourful, modern and, above all, bold. After the hardships of the Second World War, they represented a new beginning and showed the jewellery scene the way to modernity.
The time was obviously ripe for the outlandish creations of the enfant terrible of jewellery design. So ripe, in fact, that in 1966 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, presented his wife Queen Elizabeth II with a ruby brooch by Grima, which she wore again and again at official appearances throughout her life.
In 1969, the Swiss watch manufacturer Omega commissioned Grima to design their «About Time» watch collection. 55 watches and 31 pieces of jewellery originated in collaboration between Grima and Omega the likes of which the world had never seen before. After the great triumph of «About Time», the «Jeux d'Or» collection followed in 1972.
In the meantime, Grima's miniature works of art have become sought-after collectors' items. Since his death in 2007, his wife Jojo and daughter Francesca have continued the tradition of the house.
We would like to thank Ms Francesca Grima, daughter of the designer, London, for the kind remarks via
Literature: William Grant, Andrew Grima, The father of Modern Jewellery, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2020, p. 48 - 49, p. 132 and p. 137 (cf.).
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