Large painting with sunflowers was executed by German good listed painter Erich Krüger (1897 in Berlin - 1978 in Benzingerode).

Krüger worked as a freelance artist in Berlin. He primarily painted landscapes, animals, and still lifes. His studies at the Berlin Art Academy under Bruno Paul were interrupted by the First World War. He then continued his studies with Professor Gärtner and Paul Müller-Kaempff. In 1944, his studio, along with numerous works, was destroyed by a bomb. He subsequently moved to the northern Harz Mountains, to the village of Benzingerode near Wernigerode in Braunschweig, where he lived until his death.

The artist's pleasing, realistic style of painting was appreciated during the Nazi era. He was represented at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1944 with two oil still lifes. Thirty-six of his motifs, including "Sunny Corridors" and "Poppy and Sunflower," were reproduced and manufactured and sold through the May Art Institute. In the GDR, reproductions of Krüger's paintings, including "Red Poppy," were included in the Gradus-Blätter program. "... With this, the conventional taste of the masses had initially reasserted itself...", while Socialist Realism suffered a setback.

The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts offered Krüger a professorship in 1967. In Benzingerode, he primarily painted Harz pictures and flowers. Some of his paintings (Tulips, oil on canvas, 110.5 × 80 cm) are in the possession of the Harz Museum Wernigerode and the Wernigerode Castle Museum.

Literature:  Bénézit XIII, 1999,  Audin/Vial I, 1918; on-line Wikipedia.

Inscriptions: signed lower right.

Technique: oil on canvas, Original period frame.

Measurements: unframed w 28" x h 31 7/8"(71 x 81 cm), framed 32 5/8" x 36 5/8" (83 x 93 cm).

Condition: good  condition.