Naturstudie II 1924

Karl Wiener made this landscape, Naturstudie II, with watercolor on paper. You can see how the paint bleeds and blossoms on the page, giving it a kind of ephemeral quality, like a memory. Wiener coaxes out these wonderful blues and greens. Look at the horizon line, where the land meets the sky, how the colors blur together. It’s like he’s trying to capture a feeling, an atmosphere, rather than a specific place. He’s thinking through painting. It feels like he’s searching for a way to represent the world around him, not just transcribing it. The way the clouds are painted, they’re almost like brushstrokes themselves, little dabs of purple and white. Turner comes to mind. The looseness and the interest in light and atmosphere, but Wiener’s work has an intimacy to it. It's a quiet conversation, something that stays with you long after you’ve walked away.