Reyl-Hanisch, Herbert von

Lady on the terrain Oil on wood panel 49,8 x 39,4 cm Shown is a back nude in front of a wide fantasy landscape. The depicted naked lady lets her gaze wander over a wide lake, which is lined with a typical for Reyl-Hanisch mountain landscape. She gives the impression that she is smoking a cigarette, which gives a mixture of wicked and relaxed. To the right of the figure are two cacti; classic attributes of Classical Modernism, which refuses anything pleasing. Reyl-Hanisch's landscape also obeys a unified symbolic language, as art historian Heiner Quintern has noted: "The distant view refers to the longing for knowledge, towering mountains to the unattainably great. The whole scene gets by with a very reduced color palette; the austere composition heightens the effect of this beautiful snapshot. Probable date of origin: early 1930s. Cf. e.g. B.: "The Flight of Birds", 1932 or "Nude Girl at the Window", 1930.