A Review Of Baselitz's Painting 'Elkinstuhl'
Description
An expressionist figure painting of a nude woman using oil paint on linen
Head leaning back and sitting comfortably in her arm-chair, the woman’s left arm is slung over her chest and her right arm supporting her leaning into the armrest. She has her right leg relaxed and her foot gently touching the floor. Her left leg is folded up, pushing hard against the edge of the seat.
There are no recognizable objects other than the woman and the arm-chair.
The artist uses a primary color scheme consistently throughout the painting, creating warm blues, cool yellows, and dark reds. Muddy neutral colors are highlighted by bolder ones.
The values of light to immediate dark allows the figure to stand out with the rest of the painting.
The artist …show more content…
As a maturing artist, he joined the Expressionist movement to protest the uprising moralities and truths of his time. His paintings include destroyed landscapes, disturbing scenes, and in this case, upside-down figures. Rearranging his paintings allowed him to get a new sense of his subjects, including the one in Elke im Lehnstuhl (Elke in arm-chair). Baselitz’s goal in this was to depict the thin line between reality and abstraction in a time where the world turned upside-down. The violent brush strokes and the upside down figure in his painting alludes to the consequences and horrors of war, and how it distorts perceptions of reality to the unimaginable. In Elke im Lehnstuhl, the shades of blue with added hints of yellow and red could also add to this theme by suggesting violence (red) and joy (yellow) in the overarching amount of sadness(blue) present during times of war. The lack of a truly defined shape made with jagged lines only further conveys the chaos represented in the painting. However that is not to say that all hope for a better world is lost: By choosing a naked yet confident woman as his subject, Baselitz shows how people can remain calm and strong despite their
An expressionist figure painting of a nude woman using oil paint on linen
Head leaning back and sitting comfortably in her arm-chair, the woman’s left arm is slung over her chest and her right arm supporting her leaning into the armrest. She has her right leg relaxed and her foot gently touching the floor. Her left leg is folded up, pushing hard against the edge of the seat.
There are no recognizable objects other than the woman and the arm-chair.
The artist uses a primary color scheme consistently throughout the painting, creating warm blues, cool yellows, and dark reds. Muddy neutral colors are highlighted by bolder ones.
The values of light to immediate dark allows the figure to stand out with the rest of the painting.
The artist …show more content…
As a maturing artist, he joined the Expressionist movement to protest the uprising moralities and truths of his time. His paintings include destroyed landscapes, disturbing scenes, and in this case, upside-down figures. Rearranging his paintings allowed him to get a new sense of his subjects, including the one in Elke im Lehnstuhl (Elke in arm-chair). Baselitz’s goal in this was to depict the thin line between reality and abstraction in a time where the world turned upside-down. The violent brush strokes and the upside down figure in his painting alludes to the consequences and horrors of war, and how it distorts perceptions of reality to the unimaginable. In Elke im Lehnstuhl, the shades of blue with added hints of yellow and red could also add to this theme by suggesting violence (red) and joy (yellow) in the overarching amount of sadness(blue) present during times of war. The lack of a truly defined shape made with jagged lines only further conveys the chaos represented in the painting. However that is not to say that all hope for a better world is lost: By choosing a naked yet confident woman as his subject, Baselitz shows how people can remain calm and strong despite their