Three paintings from the cycle of the Four Seasons

Franz Gertsch (born 1930) is currently working on the completion of his cycle of the Four Seasons with the painting “Spring”. So far, “Fall” (2007/08), “Summer” (2008/09) and “Winter” (2009) are on show in the museum.

A new creative period began for Franz Gertsch with the work on “Herbst”. He sketched directly on the canvas with watercolour pens for the first time and worked for a long time without a slide projector. The application of paint appears freer and yet the painting still makes an astonishingly photo-realistic impression when seen from a distance. In order to see Herbst in focus as a sundrenched, autumnally shaded wooded landscape, the viewer must step back quite a bit. However, the painting is also particularly fascinating when seen from close up; it becomes abstract and seemingly starts to flicker. While the play between viewing the painting from up close and the photo-realistic impression one gets at a distance is evenly matched in his earlier pictures, the balance now seems to have shifted in favor of painting.

The presentation of the three now completed seasons in one room demonstrates how the paintings harmonize in terms of color. Franz Gertsch restricts himself to a limited palette, to a few self-made hues made of earth and mineral pigments among others. While looking at the three paintings of the seasons, the color tonalities of the individual paintings interlink, certain tones are taken up again from one painting to the next. The interplay between subject, painting style and color scheme, between perception and effect occurring in each work is heightened even further in the interaction between the pictures.