Self-Portrait, c. 1930

The Viennese painter Josef Dobrowsky (1889–1964) is among the most important artists of the interwar period and is considered an important protagonist of modern painting in Austria. In the 1920s he turned to the Old Masters, studying the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/1530–1569) und Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), as one look at Dobrowsky’s Self-Portrait reveals: the painter turns his face diagonally out of the picture; light falls from the left onto one half of the face, letting the other sink into shadow. The highly arched eyebrows could signify surprise, or skepticism, too. Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) also turn towards the public with a similar facial expression in some of their self-portraits.

AM, 2019