Mother and Child, 1921

Along with his work as a painter, the Austrian artist Otto Rudolf Schatz (1900–1961) was active primarily as a woodcutter – more than 1.500 extant motifs exist. The work Mother and Child shows a woman huddled in a landscape, lovingly tending to her baby. The artist carved the concentrated lines in a soft, curvy manner into the wood, creating a dense graphic composition with an interplay of different movements. With this theme, Schatz transferred the Christian motif “Madonna and Infant Jesus” into a contemporary context. The technique of woodcuts experienced a particular heyday at the time of Expressionism, as the angular, powerful lines in the wood accommodated the movement’s demand for the primal and original.

AK, 2021