Nude in Front of Yellow Box, 1925

In the autumn/winter of 1924/25, Herbert Boeckl (1894–1966) worked at the Vienna studio of fellow Carinthian painter Felix Esterl (1894–1931), while his family stayed in Carinthia. At Praterstraße 34, he created a number of important paintings including the Nude in Front of Yellow Box as well as the Still Life with Stovepipe. These two works are connected by their warm coloring in shades of red, but also by specific props, such as the jug positioned on the stove. The female nude is standing at the center of the room. Her right hand is holding on to the corner of the table, while her left leg is propped up against the yellow box that gives the work its title. A stabilizing frame for the body is created by the stove with its vertical pipe, a rectangular shape (a painting?) on the back wall that is parallel to the picture plane and the partially outlined flower bouquet on the table. Like the two paintings of bathers in front of Eberndorf Abbey, which Boeckl created in the summer of 1925, the Nude in Front of Yellow Box almost seems modeled out of clay.

Text Leopold Museum