Fair 1917

Aladar Korosfoi-Kriesch made this painting, Fair, with oil on canvas, and it’s just a sea of activity, people and cattle blurring into one another! Look at the way the ochre and brown tones dominate, punctuated by the bright dabs of green and white. The painting has a really loose, almost impressionistic style, and it feels like the artist was trying to capture the energy of the market rather than a photographic likeness. See how the brushstrokes are really visible? It's like he's sketching with paint! The textures are so rough. It’s thick in some places, like the backs of the cows, and thin in others, especially in the sky. I love how the legs of the cattle just dissolve into the ground, it’s the best! This feels very connected to the paintings of someone like Van Gogh, an artist who was very interested in capturing the lives of rural people, and with whom Korosfoi-Kriesch would have been aware of. This painting resists one single reading, because art is about a constant conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time.