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Lot Essay
Ida Cadorin Music has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Painted nearly fifty years after his imprisonment at Dachau, Poltrona grigia (Grey Chair) depicts an anonymous figure reclining in an armchair amidst the shadows and shows Music still haunted by his memories of the atrocities he witnessed. During his imprisonment at Dachau, Music feverishly documented the horrors of his experience through his explicit and, at times, grotesque drawings.
Reflecting on his time at Dachau, Music related,"We lived in a world that was beyond all imagining, a world which was absurd, hallucinating, unreal: another planet maybe. There were strange rules, a precise and cruel order, at the limit of what could even be believed. Anyone invested with the slightest bit of authority, no matter how small could crush you like a worm. And you accepted this reality as though there could not possibly exist a different order of things. You even came to fear the outside world" (quoted in M. Gibson, "Tua Res Agitur" in Zoran Music, Virgin Islands, 1988, p. 40).
Music drew to document what he called "the tremendous and tragic beauty" (ibid., p. 42). Upon his liberation from the camp, Music returned to painting landscapes--focusing on the tranquility of nature--in stark juxtaposition to the drawings he completed while at the camp. It was only later in 1970 that the artist was finally able to revisit his memories from the concentration camp at Dachau. Surviving such inconceivable suffering haunted Music for the rest of his life and its representations reverberated throughout his oeuvre.
In the present work, Music has stepped away from the literal representations of the holocaust and instead illustrates a phantomlike seated figure cloaked by darkness. The figure is rendered faceless, addressing the harsh reality of anonymity in death. The vigorous brushwork of the shadows is balanced by the careful strokes outlining the figure. This harrowing portrait of the faceless character painted in 1998 demonstrates the constant presence of the artist's personal experience in his art.
Painted nearly fifty years after his imprisonment at Dachau, Poltrona grigia (Grey Chair) depicts an anonymous figure reclining in an armchair amidst the shadows and shows Music still haunted by his memories of the atrocities he witnessed. During his imprisonment at Dachau, Music feverishly documented the horrors of his experience through his explicit and, at times, grotesque drawings.
Reflecting on his time at Dachau, Music related,"We lived in a world that was beyond all imagining, a world which was absurd, hallucinating, unreal: another planet maybe. There were strange rules, a precise and cruel order, at the limit of what could even be believed. Anyone invested with the slightest bit of authority, no matter how small could crush you like a worm. And you accepted this reality as though there could not possibly exist a different order of things. You even came to fear the outside world" (quoted in M. Gibson, "Tua Res Agitur" in Zoran Music, Virgin Islands, 1988, p. 40).
Music drew to document what he called "the tremendous and tragic beauty" (ibid., p. 42). Upon his liberation from the camp, Music returned to painting landscapes--focusing on the tranquility of nature--in stark juxtaposition to the drawings he completed while at the camp. It was only later in 1970 that the artist was finally able to revisit his memories from the concentration camp at Dachau. Surviving such inconceivable suffering haunted Music for the rest of his life and its representations reverberated throughout his oeuvre.
In the present work, Music has stepped away from the literal representations of the holocaust and instead illustrates a phantomlike seated figure cloaked by darkness. The figure is rendered faceless, addressing the harsh reality of anonymity in death. The vigorous brushwork of the shadows is balanced by the careful strokes outlining the figure. This harrowing portrait of the faceless character painted in 1998 demonstrates the constant presence of the artist's personal experience in his art.