Zwei Mädchenakte Und Gekreuzte Stämme Am Waldteich 1920

Otto Mueller made this painting, “Zwei Mädchenakte Und Gekreuzte Stämme Am Waldteich”, with oil on canvas. There's a kind of ochre, earthy light in this scene, with these vertical, gestural marks making up the trunks of the trees, creating these almost figurative, totemic forms. I see the trees almost as bodies, like the two figures, and the whole scene feels like it has come together through this dance of error and intuition. I can imagine Mueller being out there in the forest, wrestling with the paint, trying to capture not just the look of the place, but the feeling of being in it. The paint is thin, almost stain-like in places, and this adds to the kind of ephemeral, dreamlike quality of the painting, a sense of trying to reach something that is just out of reach. It makes me think about other painters who were trying to find a way to express something new, something beyond representation. Painters are always speaking to each other across time and space, wrestling with similar problems, and pushing each other to see the world in new ways.