Skip to content
ONLINECOLLECTION

Winter in the City, 1931

Leopold Museum,
Vienna
Oil on plywood
64.5×85 cm

Artists

  • Franz Sedlacek

    (Wrocław 1891, 1945 missing in Poland)

Currently on display at EG
Despite its darkness and heaviness, the 1931 work Winter in the City by Franz Sedlacek (1891, missing since 1945) appears as a world within the world. The people going about their daily business, playing and ice-skating, live in this world; some of them withdrawn, some of them engaged in conversation. The microcosm seems so self-contained that our perception of it appears to have no bearing on its inhabitants. Grotesquely, the village in the mountains recalls an area around a train station or an industrial suburb. The colors of the facades are only vaguely discernable under what looks like a layer of dust. The areas of snow appear like luminous gaps between them. The plain houses, with their identical-looking small black holes for windows, only differ from one another through nuances of color, their size and position within the painting. A lantern has gone out, a stray dog is looking for food, while a man on the left edge of the depiction is observing the scene – much like the beholders of this work.

Audio

Audio for children

Object data

Artist/author
  • Franz Sedlacek
Title
Winter in the City
Date
1931
Art movement
New Objectivity, Expressionism
Category
Painting
Material​/technique
Oil on plywood
Dimensions
64.5×85 cm
Credit line
Private collection
Keywords

If you have further information on this object, please contact us.

Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i

For provenance related information, please contact us.