Flight into Egypt, 1927

Franz Sedlacek (1891, missing since 1945) availed himself of biblical pictorial programs especially in 1926 and 1927, like in this rendering Flight into Egypt. It shows Joseph leading Mary, riding with the baby Jesus on a donkey, away from the imminent danger posed by Herod. What his biblical depictions have in common is that they don’t seek to educate. The protagonists appear like incidental extras within the artist’s grotesque, magical and overpowering worlds. Every detail was painted with razor-sharp precision, using colors that appear surreal in their luminosity, as if the artist, who studied chemistry, were conducting toxic experiments in the landscape. The result is a sublime, absurd but charmingly beautiful distortion and exaggeration of reality. In Linz, Sedlacek founded the artists’ association MAERZ, whose members included Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) and Klemens Brosch (1894–1926) who also created dystopian-surreal, visually stunning works in the style of Fantastic Surrealism, such as Kubin’s work “The Hour of Birth”.

RR, 2021