Haus in Waldlandschaft c. 1943

Karl Wiener’s ‘Haus in Waldlandschaft’ is a painting with a light touch, a place where colors and forms meet with a gentle kind of confidence. Look at the way the roof sits, a red patch against the muted green of the hills. The paint isn't trying too hard; it's happy to be itself, a collection of marks that together make a world. The mountains almost seem to breathe with a quiet, steady rhythm. I see a kind of echo of Matisse in the simplicity and flatness of the forms, but Wiener's palette is more subdued, more like a memory of a landscape than a direct transcription. The brushstrokes are like whispers, hinting at the textures of leaves and the solidity of stone. There’s a dialogue between the colors, and how they shape the feeling of the image. It reminds me that painting is a way of thinking, of feeling, of making sense of the world, one brushstroke at a time.