Der Leuchter – Die Gedenkkerze -… 1942

Karl Wiener made this drawing in 1942 with graphite on paper. The soft gradations of tone give a sense of volume to the stacking boxes, but they remain transparent, like a ghostly tower for the candle above. I can imagine Wiener, in front of his paper, carefully hatching the pencil to create those subtle shifts in tone. Maybe he was thinking about geometric abstraction, or the surrealist dreamscapes of someone like De Chirico. The candle seems to burn for another world, a world just beyond our reach. It glows with the aura of memory. There’s a real material intimacy to drawing. Graphite, with its range of grays, offers such a direct connection to the artist’s hand. Looking at this drawing, I wonder if the image also glows for the artist, sparking something new in his mind. It reminds me that art is a conversation across time, always feeding back into itself.