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.

Yves Klein, Work: ANT 88, 1960

Alberto Giacometti, Four Women on a Plinth, 1950

Alberto Giacometti, Landscape, 1952

Alberto Giacometti, Portrait of Annette, 1958

Alberto Giacometti, Slender Bust on Plinth (Amenophis), 1954

Emil Nolde

 

 

During our visit to Waldermarsudde on the island of Djurgarden in Stockholm we had the opportunity to see an exhibition of the paintings of German Expressionist, Emil Nolde.

 

'Colour, the painter's materials, colours in their independent existence, weeping and laughing, dreaming and rejoicing, hot and holy, like love songs and passion, like ballads and chorals' , Nolde wrote about his approach to colour.

 

Nolde favoured an impressionist style early on in his career and eventually went over to pure expressionism, where colours are imbued with intense emotion. He was a member of the German expressionist group Die Brucke for a while.

 



 

 

Gentleman and Lady in a Green Dress, 1911

 

 

 
Blonde Girls, 1918

 

 

Portrait of a Woman, Pilar Hauptman, 1912

 

 

 

 

Strange People, 1923

 

High Sea - Troubled Clouds,  1948

 



I liked the vibrancy and expressiveness of his early work. His later work became quite grotesque and fantastical and that did not appeal at all.

German Expressionism at the Courtauld

 

German Expressionism at the Courtauld, Somerset House.

 

Largely inspired by Van Gogh, Munch and the Fauve Matisse, Expressionism took root in Germany. The Expressionists preferred the Gothic to the Classical with its pointed, discontinuous shapes and its emphasis on mystical directness and strong feeling. They wanted direct communication with jolts of colour and shape. They identified personal truth with candour of expression and gradually 'Expressionis't adhered to their work.

 

Fundamental to Expressionism, the Blue Rider group was founded by Wassily Kandinsky and other painters in 1910. Transcendentalism was their common interest.  They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting.

 

 

 

Gabriele Munter, Portrait of a Young Woman in a Large Hat, 1909

This assertively modern and daring portrait conveys the woman's self-confidence, enhanced by her knowing smile and intense gaze. Munter later wrote: 'the painting of portraits is the boldest and the most difficult, the most spiritual, the most extreme task of the artist'.

Munter was part of a radical band of artists working in Munich, including Wasilly Kandinsky, with whom she founded the avant-garde group, Der Blauer Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911.

Alexej Jawlensky, The Dunes of Prerow, 1911

When he was in Murnau with Wassilly Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter, Jawlensky painted a remarkable series of landscapes using non-naturalistic colours. In 1911 in the town of Prerow he took these experiments further. Simplified forms, bold, expressive colours are used in this painting. He considered these his 'best landscapes... the pictures were the product of an overwhelming inner ecstasy'.

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation on Mahogany, 1910

 

By 1910 Kandinsky had developed his art to the brink of abstraction. He started to group his paintings into three categories: Impressions, Improvisations and Compositions. The associations were intended to be musical, emphasising the sensation of colour, line and form, freed from their descriptive functions. In this painting, isolated details can be identified, but the textured patches of brilliant colour dominate.

 

 

Heinrich Campendonk, The Dream, 1913

A dreamlike world in this painting, where a winged animal hovers over a female figure, perhaps suggesting harmony between humankind and the animals.

Alexej Jawlensky, Manola, 1913

The sitter's exaggerated eyes and powerful gaze in this painting engage the viewer directly. The use of vibrantly contrasting colours and bold contours intensify her features.

 

 

Source: 

 

Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New.