Seaside Bay (Elba), 1914

Quiet and deserted, the bay extends diagonally over the picture plane. We see a top view of a beach tapering towards a rocky cliff. The surface of the sea is shining in shades of turquoise, blue and violet. Following his studies at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, the artist Franz Wiegele (1887–1944) from the Carinthian village of Nötsch was able to go to Paris on a scholarship in late 1912. In addition to studying the works of old masters at the Louvre, he intensively explored the paintings of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). In this painting he resumes formal elements of Cézanne’s works. The patches of color created from individual brushstrokes are tectonically interwoven to form a dynamic image structure. The use of color to create space became an important instrument in Modernist painting and was frequently employed by Wiegele, who played a role in spreading these painterly impulses in Austria as a member of the Nötscher Kreis in the 1920s.

AK, 2022