Pietà 1939 - 1940

Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan painted this Pietà sometime before 1944, using oil on canvas. It’s a rough and ready kind of painting, isn’t it? The kind where you can feel the artist wrestling with the paint, trying to get it to do what they want. Look at the way he’s built up the surface with these thick, juicy strokes of paint. You can almost feel the texture, the way the bristles of the brush have dragged through the wet pigment. It’s like he’s sculpting with color, using these bold daubs of red and green to create this raw, emotional scene. And those pools of red along Christ's body, they’re not just blood, they’re like primal bursts of feeling. It reminds me of Rouault, that same sense of the sacred mixed with the gritty reality of life. It’s a painting that’s not afraid to be messy, to be human, to be vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, there’s a strange kind of beauty.