This Head of a Clown is by Expressionist painter Joseph Kutter, considered the founder of the school of modern Luxembourg painting.

At the end of the First World War, some Luxembourg artists who had studied in Munich distanced themselves not only from 19th-century Academicism, but also from Impressionism. In 1927, the Salon de la Sécession broke with the traditionalists of the Cercle Artistique du Luxembourg (C.A.L.), which had been founded in 1893. Kutter was the leader of this Luxembourg Secession. Other members were Jean Schaack (1895-1959), Jean Noerdinger (1895-1963), Harry Rabinger (1895-1966), Auguste Trémont (1892-1980), Claus Cito (1882-1965) and Nico Klopp (1894-1930).

During his lifetime, Kutter exhibited at the Salons d’Automne and at the Salon des Indépendants. Retrospectives of his work were organized in 1951 by the National Museum of Modern Art and in 1986 by the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris.

Clowns appear as a subject in Kutter’s painting around 1935, probably after he attended a variety show at the “Pôle Nord” in Luxembourg. After the performance, Kutter invited two clowns to pose for him in his studio. Whereas his first creations are very cheerful and executed in warm tones, later ones – like the sad clown presented here – are dominated by dark colours, expressing the artist’s sufferings and anxieties and reflecting his state of mind in a kind of self-portrait. Indeed, in 1936-1937, while working on his two large compositions (Luxembourg and Clervaux) for the pavilion of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937, the artist had fallen ill of a strange illness that the doctors were unable to identify or cure.

With more than 90 works, the MNHA holds the largest collection of works by this Luxembourg Expressionist artist. More than forty of them, including this Head of a Clown, come from the very generous bequest of Catherine Meyer-Kutter (1924-2009), the artist’s daughter.