Oil over pencil on canvas, 1941. 207x275 mm; 8 1/8x10 3/4 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto. Ex-collection Galerie Ultermann, Dortmund, with the label on the frame back.
Drewes (1899-1985) studied at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1921-22 with Paul Klee and Johannes Itten, and later painting with Wassily Kandinsky and the graphic arts with László Moholy-Nagy at the Dessau Staatliches Bauhaus from 1927-28. By 1930, as the pressures of pursuing abstract art intensified (seen as degenerate by the Nazis), Drewes emigrated to New York.
At the Brooklyn Museum of Art under the Federal Art Programs, he became an instructor in drawing, eventually rising to the director of the large graphic arts section in New York City from 1940-41. Around this time, he worked at the newly re-established Atelier 17 under the direction of Stanley W. Hayter.
