Mountain slope 1913

Koloman Moser made this painting with oil on canvas and it's filled with these beautiful horizontal marks of muted color. You can really see the trace of his hand! I imagine Moser standing before the mountain, palette in hand, squinting in the light. Look at how the colors shift so subtly. He captures the effect of light on the land, using these bands of pigment to suggest form and depth. There is something deeply felt in the way he simplifies the landscape to a few confident strokes. You see, that dark line defining the ridge? It's so direct, but it perfectly communicates the feeling of a mountain's edge cutting into the sky. It makes me think of other artists, like Cezanne, who used painting to understand the structure of the world, one brushstroke at a time. It’s about embodying an idea of a landscape, but it is also so much about the touch of the brush.