Justa (study after Nudes in the Forest), c. 1910

Franz Wiegele (1887–1944) was among those students who, on the initiative of Egon Schiele (1890–1918), founded the artist’s association “Neukunstgruppe” in 1909 in protest against the Vienna Academy’s teaching activities. Like his brother-in-law Anton Kolig (1886–1950), however, he is known primarily as a protagonist of the loosely linked group of Carinthian artists commonly referred to as the “Nötsch Circle”. Already in his works created before World War I, Wiegele provided inklings that the three-dimensionally rendered bodies and faces, bathed in the almost Mediterranean light of Carinthia, would later become the hallmarks of his painting. Justa – in fact Wiegele’s cousin Justine Tarmann – makes up the left part of a group of three in the large-scale composition Nudes in the Forest (1911); the other two figures were modeled on Wiegele’s siblings Alfred and Katharina. This main work by the artist, which is kept today at the Belvedere in Vienna, is thus both an unconventional family portrait and a bucolic vision of timeless appeal.

IR, 2021