Zebras 1912

Wilhelm Kuhnert made this painting of zebras with oil paint. What’s interesting is that the color palette is really muted, almost monochromatic, which creates this hazy, dreamlike quality. It's as if the artist is conjuring a memory of a place rather than documenting it. You can almost feel the dryness of the landscape through the texture he's created. The paint isn't applied in a way that hides the process; you can see the brushstrokes, especially in the foreground where the details dissolve into abstract marks. Look at the legs of the zebra closest to us – see how the gray of the ground almost bleeds into the animal? This piece reminds me a little of the Hudson River School painters, but with zebras. Ultimately, this work embraces a feeling of transience and the blurring of boundaries between representation and abstraction.