Porträt einer Dame c. 1939

Karl Wiener made this intimate portrait with pastels on paper, a medium known for its soft, velvety texture and luminous colors. Look at those marks! I imagine the artist rubbing the pigment directly onto the surface, building up layers of color to create the woman's likeness. There's a real tenderness in the way he's rendered her features – the gentle curves of her face, the soft gaze of her eyes. I'm thinking about the artist moving around the paper, adding touches of color here and there, responding to the emerging image with each stroke. The contrast between the warm tones of her skin and the cool blues of the background creates a kind of visual tension. The red sweater feels almost too bright against her face. Wiener, in his own way, is grappling with the complexities of human emotion, capturing a fleeting moment of vulnerability and introspection. It reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker's portraits – that same sense of quiet intensity and psychological depth. Artists riff off of each other, each generation building on the discoveries and experiments of those who came before.