Waldlandschaft 1925

Otto Mueller made this painting of a forest landscape, Waldlandschaft, and you can see it's all about these beautiful blocks of colour, greens and blues, coming together in a soft kind of way. I imagine Mueller was out there, maybe not in this exact forest, but thinking about it, feeling the light filtering through the trees. He's not trying to trick you into thinking it's real; it's more like he's handing you a feeling, a memory of being in the woods. Look at the trunks of those trees. They're almost dancing, right? That one on the left, leaning over like it's telling a secret. And the colours, those earthy reds mixing with the bright greens, it's like he's playing with how much you can simplify and still get the point across. It reminds me of other painters of his generation who were figuring out how to push what painting could do, how much emotion you could pack into a simple shape or colour. And that's the thing about painting, isn't it? It's a conversation across time, artists riffing off each other, trying to find new ways to express the same old feelings.