Cracked Eggs
Cracked Eggs
Siegfried Gerhard Reinhardt
American, 1925 - 1984
1977
Oil on Board
18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61.0 cm)
Signed and Dated Lower Right
A still life of broken eggshells scattered across a wooden surface, with a single whole brown egg set apart, painted with the crisp, illusionistic detail that defined Reinhardt's mature technique. The subdued, almost monochrome palette and raking light heighten the sculptural presence of the shells, turning a domestic fragment into a quietly weighted composition.
The cracked or broken egg was a recurring motif for Reinhardt, appearing across several works of the 1970s (see also his smaller Golden Egg, 1972) as a vehicle for themes of fragility, birth, and transformation consistent with the symbolic undercurrent running through his religious and stained-glass work. At 18 x 24 in., this is a more fully developed treatment of the subject than his smaller panels, giving collectors a substantial still life by a St. Louis artist whose reputation was built on exactly this level of technical precision.
Siegfried Gerhard Reinhardt (1925–1984)
Born in Eydkuhnen, Germany, Siegfried Reinhardt emigrated to the United States with his family in 1928 and settled in St. Louis, where he became one of the city's most prominent twentieth-century artists. Though largely self-taught as a painter — he earned his degree in English Literature from Washington University in 1950 — his talent drew early national attention: Life magazine named him among nineteen important new American artists in 1950, and Time profiled him a decade later. Reinhardt taught at Washington University from 1955 to 1970 and was a prominent member of the St. Louis Artists Guild. He is best known for pioneering a style blending realism and surrealism, often called superrealism, and for his decades-long collaboration with St. Louis stained-glass artisan Emil Frei, for whom he designed windows from 1949 until his death in 1984. His most celebrated public commission is the series of murals depicting the history of aviation at Lambert International Airport. A Lutheran, Reinhardt frequently drew on Christian iconography, and his religious and figurative work remains held in numerous private and institutional collections.
A still life of broken eggshells scattered across a wooden surface, with a single whole brown egg set apart, painted with the crisp, illusionistic detail that defined Reinhardt's mature technique. The subdued, almost monochrome palette and raking light heighten the sculptural presence of the shells, turning a domestic fragment into a quietly weighted composition.
The cracked or broken egg was a recurring motif for Reinhardt, appearing across several works of the 1970s (see also his smaller Golden Egg, 1972) as a vehicle for themes of fragility, birth, and transformation consistent with the symbolic undercurrent running through his religious and stained-glass work. At 18 x 24 in., this is a more fully developed treatment of the subject than his smaller panels, giving collectors a substantial still life by a St. Louis artist whose reputation was built on exactly this level of technical precision.
Siegfried Gerhard Reinhardt (1925–1984)
Born in Eydkuhnen, Germany, Siegfried Reinhardt emigrated to the United States with his family in 1928 and settled in St. Louis, where he became one of the city's most prominent twentieth-century artists. Though largely self-taught as a painter — he earned his degree in English Literature from Washington University in 1950 — his talent drew early national attention: Life magazine named him among nineteen important new American artists in 1950, and Time profiled him a decade later. Reinhardt taught at Washington University from 1955 to 1970 and was a prominent member of the St. Louis Artists Guild. He is best known for pioneering a style blending realism and surrealism, often called superrealism, and for his decades-long collaboration with St. Louis stained-glass artisan Emil Frei, for whom he designed windows from 1949 until his death in 1984. His most celebrated public commission is the series of murals depicting the history of aviation at Lambert International Airport. A Lutheran, Reinhardt frequently drew on Christian iconography, and his religious and figurative work remains held in numerous private and institutional collections.
