Naturstudie I c. 1924

Karl Wiener made this watercolour landscape, Naturstudie I, sometime between 1901 and 1949, just using paper and pigment. There's something almost diagrammatic in the way Wiener uses colour, like a little map of atmosphere. Look at how the strokes of blues and purples up top aren’t blended, allowing the white of the paper to breathe through, suggesting the changeable nature of the sky. Then, the cumulus clouds are like puffs of nothing, blobs of pure colour. The materiality of the paint is a big part of it, how the water seeps into the paper, creating soft edges that mimic the airy forms, the landscape becomes a feeling, a thought about weather. It reminds me a little of Agnes Martin’s watercolours; there's a similar interest in the surface and an understanding that painting is also a record of an action. It’s a quiet piece, but so full of potential.