Grete Wiesenthal in a Landscape, undated

The Austrian painter and graphic artist Erwin Lang (1886–1962) created a clearly structured landscape in a square format. It shows the dancer Grete Wiesenthal (1885–1970) wearing a long dress and gliding light-footed and shoeless across a meadow. She is turning around with a graceful gesture, as if she had just been called by someone. The soft outlines of the figure and the ornamental planes of the landscape are testament to Lang’s exploration of Japanese color woodcuts. The son of the women’s rights activist Marie Lang (1858–1934), the artist’s first marriage was to the dancer Grete Wiesenthal. Together with her sisters, she was an exponent of the Vienna avant-garde of Expressionist dance. Having broken away from the tradition of classical ballet, this type of dance became an autonomous art form around 1910. It promoted a new body language which would exert a decisive influence on the visual arts.

AK, 2021