mosaic
21 1/4 x 17 1/4 x 1 inches
incised signature verso
Estimate: $600 - $800
Price Realized:
$1,625
Includes buyer's premium
unframed
From a Private Collection
overall in good condition, some losses mostly to edges, would benefit from a cleaning
Elsa Schmid was an accomplished German artist of many mediums, best known for her mosaic and glass work. In her youth, she spent many summers at an artists' colony in the Italian hilltown of Anticoli Corrado, learning mosaic, painting, and art history. After immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, Schmid’s experimental mosaic technique, laying stones in the sand ground face-up, caught the attention of the art world and beyond. In the 1940s, she began teaching the craft to Albert Einstein’s stepdaughter, Margot, and soon became close friends with the famed physicist. In a letter thanking Schmid for a portrait she created of him in 1952 (now in the collection of Boston University), Einstein praised her artistic skill: “you were able to capture my innermost spirit,” he wrote. Schmid was also a friend of Swiss-German artist Paul Klee and was married to art dealer J.B Neumann, owner of the New Circle Gallery in New York. Her work is held in several prominent collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge.
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