Gardens in Sevilla 1921

Samuel Mutzner's canvas, Gardens in Sevilla, uses oil paint to create a vibrant landscape. Born in Romania, Mutzner spent much of his career in Paris, but this work suggests a period in Spain. The social history of art reminds us that even seemingly straightforward landscape painting always comes with its own cultural baggage. Consider the institution of the Academy, the arbiter of artistic taste, and the associated hierarchies of genre. For centuries, landscape was seen as distinctly inferior to history painting with its supposedly grand, moralising themes. Only with the rise of Romanticism did landscape begin to rise in status. Here, the all-over composition suggests an engagement with impressionism and the avant-garde, movements that often challenged academic conventions. To understand fully this work we might dig into the exhibition history of the period and study art criticism that shaped artistic taste.