Railway Train, n. d.

Viktor Pipal (1887–1971) often let music inform his mood when painting. In his pictures, he brings house walls, factory chimneys, power poles, back alleys, railway stations and laundry lines left to neglect and oblivion back from their peripheral hiddenness and makes them the timeless center of his works. With his postimpressionist representation of objects and places, he sensitively feels his way along social and societal abysses of poverty. In the undated watercolor Railway Train, one can almost hear the rhythmic rattling of the solitary train moving along the track cut through the melancholic stillness of a bleak winter day. The foggy monochromatic representation strikes a dismal note similar to some works of Egon Schiele (1890–1918), developing a strange and uncanny pull in its struggling between light and darkness.

RR, 2021