Franz Gertsch (1930–2022)

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'Between the ages of twenty and forty, I didn’t really have a style of my own. I was searching. The only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to paint realistically.'

... Franz Gertsch later recalled. Der Maler (The Painter), painted in 1966, reflects that search with a healthy dose of self-irony. It is an allegory, a symbolic reflection on painting itself, filled with references that invite us to decipher them.

On one level, the painting explores the classical theme of the artist and the model. Gertsch places particular emphasis on the motif of the shadow, alluding to the ancient legend that painting was invented by tracing a shadow’s outline. We see the silhouette of his naked wife, Maria, and her shadow cast on the wall. His own shadow also appears prominently, while he himself sits hidden behind a curtain. That curtain, in turn, alludes to the tradition of trompe-l'œil – the illusionistic depiction of reality that was especially popular in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. The sheet of paper pinned to the wall, complete with its painted shadow, is another quotation from the trompe-l'œil tradition.

The painting also, of course, addresses the classical theme of the nude in art. This is further underlined by the large book entitled NUS – French for 'nudes' – lying at the bottom of the stack of books. At the top of the pile is Diary of a Painter, an illustrated artist’s book that Gertsch had published the previous year. It is a humorous reckoning with his alter ego: a painter in the midst of an artistic crisis who ultimately fails and resigns himself to defeat. The book ends with the words:

'I’m going to give it all up and find another profession.'

The painting Der Schriftsteller (The Writer), displayed to the left, is likewise a self-portrait with autobiographical elements. Its flat planes of colour and vivid palette already anticipate Gertsch’s Pop Art period.