Landscape

Josef Eberz' graphic, which alludes to Cubism and Expressionist scenography, depicts a mountain landscape illuminated by the sun. Stylized trees with circular crowns placed on the sides of the composition form backdrops. That way, they refer to the seventeenth-century tradition of composing landscape paintings. In the middle of the view, trees surround a church. A slender woman is standing on a hill in front of the church. In the distance, on the right, one can see boats on the lake. On the opposite shore of the lake, there is a village. The horizon is obscured by the peaks of high and rocky mountains. All the elements, modelled using chiaroscuro, have been reduced to simplified and multiplied geometrical forms. The composition has a mysterious, fairy-tale quality, reminiscent of a dream or a memory of a stay in the mountains with a loved one. The woman in the graphic is presumably Gertrud Alber, the artist's wife.The graphic, made in crayon lithography in 1918, was printed on handmade ribbed paper with a watermark showing a gryphon climbing to the right and the monogram JWL. It was published in the annual folder of the Jahresgabe des Nassauischen Kunstvereins for 1918. Between 1918 and 1920, Eberz took up the theme of paradise and love and birth several times, placing the protagonists in idyllic and exotic natural settings. From as early as 1915, he created cubist compositions in which a musical rhythm pulsed. These were both paintings and lithographs. His works are close to André Derain's landscapes.Josef Eberz was born in 1880 in Limburg am Lahn and died in 1942 in Munich. He trained at the Munich Academy and presumably with Peter Halm and Franz von Stuck. He continued his education in Karlsruhe, Düsseldorf, and Stuttgart. He worked in Munich as a painter, graphic artist and illustrator. He created wall paintings and mosaics. He undertook themes of still life, landscape as well as multi-figural scenes.

Ewa Gwiazdowska