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Forest, 1925

Leopold Museum,
Vienna © Foundation Wörlen,
Passau
Oil on canvas
100.5×55.5 cm

Artists

  • Georg Philipp Wörlen

    (Dillingen an der Donau 1886–1954 Passau)

Unfortunately not on display at the moment
Covering the entire vertical picture area in warm, rich, modulated colors, Georg Philipp Wörlen (1886–1954) lines up densified vertical stripes in his 1925 painting Forest. Only gradually can they be identified as tree trunks: At the lower edge of the picture plane, intertwining roots anchored in the reddish-brown earth take shape, and in the upper quarter, individual diagonal branch-like cross-limbs fork off from the dense linearity of the parallel trunks. It is not the representational image of a forest, but the phenomenon of the play of light and shadow and the space-defining density of the trunks in a coniferous culture that Wörlen makes the starting point of his formal exploration. The confounding game of serial parallelism and the glazing-induced polychromy create a shimmering atmosphere. In his conceptual approach, the work of the Passau-born artist is reminiscent of ideas of form art and kineticism.

MH, 2021

Object data

Artist/author
  • Georg Philipp Wörlen
Title
Forest
Date
1925
Art movement
Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hagenbund
Category
Painting
Material​/technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
100.5×55.5 cm
Signature
Signed and dated lower left: G. PH. W…RLEN 1925
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna, Inv. 709
Inventory access
Contributed to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994
Selection of Reference works
  • Bianca Buhr: Georg Philipp Wörlen. Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Köln 2020.
  • Zwischen den Kriegen. Österreichische Künstler 1918–1938, hrsg. von Rudolf Leopold, Wien 2007 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 21.09.2007-28.01.2008).
Catalogue raisonne
  • Buhr 2020: 70
Keywords
landscape representationforest/woodforest path

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Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i
Dr. Rudolf Leopold, Wien (o.D.);
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Wien (seit 1994).

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Search in collection

landscape representationforest/woodforest path

2023/2024 Partial funding for digitization by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport „Kulturerbe digital“ as part of NextGenerationEU.