Street Bend in Ybbs on the Danube, undated

An eerie pull inheres in the work Street Bend in Ybbs on the Danube. The houses lining the street seem to be glowing from inside in the warm light. Like in Egon Schiele’s (1890–1918) Crescent of Houses II (Island Town), the houses are building blocks constructed into the picture that seem to have an uncanny life of their own. The glassy street leads into pitch-black uncertainty. It is perhaps one of the most ominous pictures that Josef Dobrowsky (1889–1964) made from 1920 of his wife Theresa’s hometown. What interested him, though, was empirical experimental exploration of the mood of light and color and creation of new realities rather representation of existing ones.

RR, 2021