A Place Called Space: From Monet to Picasso

Sunday 22 April 2018

From Monet to Picasso - 2

From Monet to Picasso

at the Albertina, Vienna.

Continuing with this amazing collection of classics of the 20th century, collected by two people, the Batliners.

Herbert Boeckl, Portrait of M.B., 1919

'The artist places some spot onto the canvas and then unconsciously gives it an essential shape. [He] doesn't know what this spot means. [He] adds a second, a third, and a fourth spot. [He] still doesn't know for a long time what it will be, yet [he] instinctively senses early on what the shape requires'. This painting is composed of large spots of colour, which, through the black contours, eventually took the shape of a human figure.

Franz Sedlacek, Evening Landscape, 1933

Franz Sedlacek, Mountain Landscape with Automobile, 1931

Josef Floch, Interior with a Black Folding Screen, 1947

Max Beckmann, Woman with Cat, 1942

In this painting Beckmann describes an existential situation - one he and Quappi, his wife, must repeatedly have experienced in their Amsterdam exile: an enforced leisure is evoked by the narrow, unusual room, which frequently had to be darkened because of the danger of air raids. Only the sleeping cat and the flowers seem to introduce a relaxed and easy-going tone.

Rene Magritte, The Enchanted Domain, 1953

Paul Delvaux, Landscape with Lanterns, 1958

Like all of Delvaux's paintings this has a mysterious dream atmosphere. This particular one may be understood as a melancholic, retrospective glance at the past. In the centre appears a woman in black looking after a funeral cortege moving into the picture's depth. On a path lit by gaslights, two men carry a shroud-covered corpse towards a hilly landscape from which several ancient ruins rise up.

Pablo Picasso, The Playing Cards, 1912

Pablo Picasso, Woman in a Green Hat, 1947

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Guitar, 1942

Pablo Picasso, Nun Persecuted by the Devil, 1945

Pablo Picasso, Nude Seated in a Chair, 1963

Pablo Picasso, Nude Woman with Bird and Flute Player, 1967

Pablo Picasso, Sylvette, 1954

Pablo Picasso, Earthenware Vase with Two Figures, 1959

Georges Braque, The Sideboard, 1920

Joan Miro, Birds and Insects, 1938

Francis Bacon, Seated Figure, 1960

Bacon displayed disfigured and decrepit bodies which radiate vitality and aggressiveness. In Seated Figure, the deformation of reality has been pushed to the limit. Enclosed within a narrow black case, a man in street clothes appears to be lashing about desperately. His face and hands are severely injured, if not maimed. In Bacon's art, distortion is carried as far as the dissolution of form and motif. His works are essentially metaphors of life based on the dialectics of growing and perishing, of life and death.