Village Scene with Brick Wall, 1931

Somber gray clouds darken the sky. With unreal intensity, the red of an unplastered brick wall and the light-green yet sparse vegetation break through the eerie atmosphere of the brewing storm in this village that looks like a ghost town. Strictly demarcated color areas and unstructured surfaces shape this 1931 Village Scene with Brick Wall, which appears like an empty theatrical scenery. The impression of spatial depth is created by converging lines rather than shadows conveying three-dimensionality. Already one year earlier, Josef Dobrowsky (1889–1964) had begun to try his hand at New Objectivity by using similar stylistic devices in Landscape with Wall.

RR, 2021