Illustration for Niobe 1920

Curator: Standing before us is Artuš Scheiner's "Illustration for Niobe," a tempera print created in 1920. It presents a rather melancholic scene. What's your initial take? Editor: My first impression is one of immense sadness and resignation. The stark, weeping rock dominates the composition, its scale dwarfing the figures at the base. The whole scene seems to convey a sense of inescapable sorrow etched in stone. Curator: Precisely. Note how the falls, emerging from the stone’s ‘eyes’, are central to both the emotional narrative and composition. Scheiner uses these cascading streams not just as visual anchors, but as deeply symbolic representations of ceaseless lamentation. We see the application of tempera, giving the landscape an almost ethereal quality, blurring lines to further symbolize fluidity and weeping. Editor: Right. But what strikes me is how these very tears also depend on physical properties, on the sheer downward force acting upon liquid, and also on pigment and binder mixed on a slab before their transfer onto a surface by way of a tool! In other words, here is loss transmuted through tangible labor, the repetitive application that imitates the persistence of sorrow, the means as crucial as the effect. And I see this carried into the moss and lichen detail meticulously created around the stones. Curator: Indeed. Observe further how Scheiner arranges the elements using pictorial space: figures set aside to reinforce solitude, light, diffused—nothing softens this portrayal of grief; structurally brilliant, I would add. Editor: It is this treatment which resonates! This image feels grounded. Tempera here emphasizes earthly labor involved to show such heights of despair. But to circle back, I think how that material translation—from concept into practiced technique, into tangible object—ultimately enhances the symbolic power, creating a resonating depiction about Niobe’s mythical pain. Curator: Well, a fine synthesis, wouldn’t you agree? Scheiner’s work transcends mere representation, doesn’t it? Instead, the artist presents a deeply philosophical exploration of grief that material reality serves only to enhance. Editor: Ultimately, a demonstration of how tangible form mediates the intangible emotion; I will carry those cascades, materially etched, long beyond this gallery.