Group at the Edge of the Wood, 1920

This painting was made ahead of the many journeys Boeckl (1894–1966) would go on to take throughout the early 1920s that brought him to Paris, Berlin, and Sicily. The painter presented here a portrait of himself and his wife, Maria Boeckl. Just a year prior to its painting, in 1919, the artist was married to Maria, whose maiden name was Plahna. In time, she became the mother of his nine children. She often modeled for the painter, specifically for nudes, as she has in this painting. The nude female form planted in an idyllic rural setting points symbolically toward the Primeval. The clothed, civilized figure of the man opposite her thereby acts as a thematic antithesis, as well as a spatial counterpoint. Accompanied by two crouching dogs, both figures appear as archetypes within a lakeside landscape. Using unusually strong and passionate brushstrokes, Boeckl seems to peel the figures out of their painted surface. The apparent force and dynamism of the brushwork seem to erase any contradictions that may exist between coarseness and grace.

Text Leopold Museum