Sigmundskron (Study), 1920/21

Relying on dull subdued earth-tone colors, the East-Tyrol-born painter Albin Egger-Lienz (1868–1926) steeps his landscape study in the dense atmosphere of a change of weather. The wide sky above the chain of hills in the background, the frilly flower heads in the foreground, and the path that leads, in central perspective, from the foreground into the depth of the picture space and loses itself in the central part of the meadow landscape stand out contrastively from the muted color canon in their whitish hues. With broad, loose brushstrokes and translucent color application, Egger-Lienz gave a sense of cursoriness to the sketchy and spontaneous-looking picture. Nevertheless, the artist titled and signed this piece on cardboard, giving the study the status of a work in its own right. And although he strictly rejected Ferdinand Hodler’s (1853-1918) concept of parallelism, Egger-Lienz’s depiction is characterized by strict pictorial composition and central-perspective spatial construction. Egger-Lienz referred to a compositional formula founded in nature, from which he derived and built his pictorial inventions.

MH, 2021