City Park 1911

Kmetty János made this painting, City Park, sometime in the 20th century probably, with oils on canvas. He's laid down these strokes of greens, yellows, and browns like he’s composing music. It makes me wonder if he’s working from life, or from memory, or both? Because it’s not really how a park looks, but maybe it’s how a park feels? There's the barest representation of a bench, a fragment of a building, and these dark emphatic verticals of trees which create such strong accents. The park scene feels very constructed—it's a painting of a park, but it's also just about painting itself, right? Like he’s trying to figure out, what does it mean to make a painting of a park? I like the way the painting pushes and pulls, making us aware of its flat surface, but also pulling us into the depths of the scene. Paintings like this keep the conversation going about abstraction versus representation, and I think that’s exciting.