Baumlandschaft 1935

Richard Oelze made this dream-like landscape using charcoal and pencil. It’s all wispy marks and muted tones; it’s like looking into a memory or a half-forgotten tale. I wonder what Oelze was thinking when he was making this? The landscape feels haunted, like a place where something significant once happened. The strange tree trunks are so still, yet they feel like they’re reaching. They’re like silent witnesses, their gnarled textures whispering stories of time and weather. The upper part of the drawing reminds me of Yves Tanguy, someone else in Europe trying to represent the unconscious. And those clouds! Are they clouds, or are they something else? They seem to morph into faces, birds, or maybe just pure feeling. They’re ambiguous, like everything in this landscape, which invites us to bring our own interpretations. It’s this play with ambiguity that keeps the conversation going, inspiring new ways of seeing and feeling the world.