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Lot Essay
Dr. Pavel Liska has confirmed the authenticity of the present work.
The present work was painted in 1920, towards the end of his time in Matten bei Interlaken, where at the invitation of his patron Bernhard Mayer, he had moved with his family after the war. It illustrates a conventionalised “African” village with five huts on the lakefront surrounded by a hilly landscape with six palm trees and a cactus, that are mirrored in the water. Seven black and white figures are carrying out a fisher’s daily work: taking the boat out to fish, fixing nets or cooking the fish on an open fire.
The composition is balanced and compact – in the lower half; all the figures, huts and the reflected image of the blue mountainous landscape and the yellow sky in the water. The upper half shows various colourful gradations of horizon; blue and purple mountain ridges and the green tops of the palm trees. A stylised heaven extends above the highest horizon – four vertical lines form five cylinder-shaped fields, which indicate the rhythmically curved yellow-red-green wreaths of the setting sun.
The work is painted after the artist’s equivalence method with which Segal aims to divide his artworks into equal fields that interact as single pieces of an entire puzzle, as well as individual and independent images. The flows of colour continue onto the artist’s frame, with the palette of colours limited to blue (purple), yellow (brown), red and green which is used by the artist to indicate a universal order. His brushstroke is not “impressionistic” anymore, instead placing each single colour in separate, parallel fields, creating a certain liveliness, which and is very characteristic and immediately identifiable as Segal’s artistic approach during this period.
- Pavel Liska
The present work was painted in 1920, towards the end of his time in Matten bei Interlaken, where at the invitation of his patron Bernhard Mayer, he had moved with his family after the war. It illustrates a conventionalised “African” village with five huts on the lakefront surrounded by a hilly landscape with six palm trees and a cactus, that are mirrored in the water. Seven black and white figures are carrying out a fisher’s daily work: taking the boat out to fish, fixing nets or cooking the fish on an open fire.
The composition is balanced and compact – in the lower half; all the figures, huts and the reflected image of the blue mountainous landscape and the yellow sky in the water. The upper half shows various colourful gradations of horizon; blue and purple mountain ridges and the green tops of the palm trees. A stylised heaven extends above the highest horizon – four vertical lines form five cylinder-shaped fields, which indicate the rhythmically curved yellow-red-green wreaths of the setting sun.
The work is painted after the artist’s equivalence method with which Segal aims to divide his artworks into equal fields that interact as single pieces of an entire puzzle, as well as individual and independent images. The flows of colour continue onto the artist’s frame, with the palette of colours limited to blue (purple), yellow (brown), red and green which is used by the artist to indicate a universal order. His brushstroke is not “impressionistic” anymore, instead placing each single colour in separate, parallel fields, creating a certain liveliness, which and is very characteristic and immediately identifiable as Segal’s artistic approach during this period.
- Pavel Liska