Provenance: Maria Salzmann-Kleinschmidt, Basel; private property Southern Germany
Literature: Ausst.Kat. Paul Kleinschmidt. 1883 - 1949, Ulmer Museum, 1978, cat.no. 69; Paul Keinschmidt zum 100. Geburtstag. 1883 - 1949. paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg 1983, cat.no. 88, fig color plate p. 131 (cf. reconstruction of the "Bardekoration", 1938/40, fig p. 86f.)
Barbara Lipps-Kant, Paul Kleinschmidt, 1977, vol. 2, p. 544, no. 359

Typical for Paul Kleinschmidt's imagery are the mostly dazzling, voluptuous and sensual women he shows as modern monuments of femininity. He was inspired as much by the Berlin nightlife of the 1920s as he was by his enthusiasm for life in the traveling circus: He spent his childhood there and remembered the barmaids, waitresses, strumpets, dancers, and circus riders he later visualized in an expressive manner, adding erotic accessories or death buffets to the milieu of bars, cafés, and vaudevilles. The National Socialists, who ostracized Kleinschmidt, chafed at such depictions. They confiscated some of his works and showed some of them in the Munich exhibition "Degenerate Art" in 1937. He was also banned from painting. However, this only inspired him to continue working. After his escape to France failed, Kleinschmidt settled with his family in Bensheim an der Bergstraße. Here, many of his paintings were destroyed in a bombing raid in 1945.