Female Nude. Postcard, 1917

Along with his penchant for idiosyncratic, surreal depictions, which would become so characteristic of Rudolf Kalvach’s (1883–1932) oeuvre, the artist also used a classical repertoire of motifs. Already during his studies at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, Kalvach intently explored the motif of the human body. Many of his early graphic studies were created already in the preparatory class held by Alfred Roller (1864–1935), which the artist attended from 1900 to 1903. This 1917 female nude was conceived as a postcard and features few of Kalvach’s characteristic traits. The emphasized outlines alone are reminiscent of the paintings and graphic works created by the artist around 1910. Kalvach modeled the female figure’s body parts using only two different shades of red, and thus drastically reduced the depiction.

AS, 2021