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After his failed love affair with Mathilde Schönberg, Gerstl became socially isolated. The depiction of his naked body with emphasized genitals shows him as a helpless, defenseless person, cast into the hands of fate.
Using relatively contained brushwork, Gerstl painted this self-portrait some time before he turned to a more gestural, expressive style of painting. Occasionally interpreted as an allusion to the risen Lazarus or an Ecce Homo depiction, it seems that the artist has projected his individualist, lone path in art into a universal image.
Certainly, the work’s expansive brushwork, swirls and loops and background meadow are all consistent with Gerstl’s approach in Gmunden 1908. Stylistically, the work plainly came before Gerstl’s group portraits (see RG64/65 below), so probably early summer 1908. Kallir 47 – exhibited at Neue Galerie from opening, 28.9.1931.
In 1931, Richard Gerstl’s surviving oeuvre was discovered by Otto Kallir in a dusty Viennese warehouse, where the artist’s family had stored it following his suicide in 1908. Kallir presented the unknown painter’s first exhibition at the Neue Galerie later in 1931, to immediate acclaim. However, the rise of the “Austrian Van Gogh” was ...
Gerstl goes to back to his own family apartment at Nußdorferstraße 35, where he paints a number of works (see Gerstl’s works, Gmunden 1908-Suicide), including perhaps his most astonishing self-portrait, Selbstbildnis (Akt in ganzer Figur) (right) a life-size nude of himself dated 12 September 1908.
Sep 14, 1883 - Nov 4, 1908. Richard Gerstl was an Austrian painter and draughtsman known for his expressive psychologically insightful portraits, his lack of critical acclaim during his lifetime, and his affair with the wife of Arnold Schoenberg which led to his suicide. Richard Gerstl was born in a prosperous civil family to Emil Gerstl, a ...
Apr 14, 2012 · Richard Gerstl. Famous works. Added: 27 Mar, 2024. ‘Self-portrait in front of blue background’ was created in 1905 by Richard Gerstl in Art Nouveau (Modern) style. Find more prominent pieces of self-portrait at Wikiart.org – best visual art database.
