Still Life with Garden Utensils, 1911

Albert Paris Gütersloh (1887–1973) is the pseudonym of Albert Conrad Kiehtreiber, who attended the acting school at the Raimundtheater in Vienna until 1908. After his first acting jobs in provincial areas, Gütersloh turned his attention to painting around 1907. He was self-taught. His debut exhibition took place at the International Kunstschau in Vienna in 1909. At the end of that year, he was involved in the exhibition of the Neukunst Group around Egon Schiele (1890–1918). The Still Life with Garden Utensils is one of the earliest oil paintings by this artist who was to become a highly respected professor at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. The subject and arrangement are clearly influenced by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), whose clay-like still life paintings had revolutionized the traditional representation of space. The table placed at a right angle appears to be tilting out of the picture; the stasis of objects is called into question: Albert Paris Gütersloh subjects the firmly established to uncertainty.

AM, 2019