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1910 Absam/Tyrol – 2001 Vienna
- Title
- „Mittelmeerische Landschaft“ („Mediterranean Landscape“)
- Time
- 1972
- signed
- and dated lower right "MWeiler 72", verso titled and dated
- Technique
- tempera on canvas
- Measurements
- 15 ¾ × 23 ½ in
illustrated in: A. Krapf u.a.: Max Weiler. Werkverzeichnis der Bilder von 1932 bis 1974, Salzburg 1974, catalog raisonné no. 736.
Max Weiler is one of the most important Austrian painters of the twentieth century. Numerous international exhibitions, prestigious public commissions, and major awards testify to his success. In 1937, Weiler participated in the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris; in 1960, he represented Austria at the Venice Biennale; and in 1961, he was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize. From 1964 to 1981, Weiler served as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Weiler’s unmistakable visual language emerged from an almost spiritual dialogue with nature. He himself described his abstract, gestural-expressive paintings as a „re-creation of nature, without any naturalism – a bringing forth anew of tree-like, grass-like, cloud-like, earth-like, flower-like, air-like forms.“ In Weiler’s landscapes, the focus is not on topography, but on the life-giving force that animates it. Rather than a static snapshot, his works present a process – an amorphous growth and transformation, an organic whole.
„Mediterranean Landscape“ belongs to the group of works known as „landscapes on tone grounds“, a term coined by the artist himself to describe the creative phase from 1969 to 1973, during which he painted not on white but on variously colored surfaces. The multilayered term „tone“ refers to the mysterious power of the ground in different color tones, which lend the composition an all-pervading tonal base, a unique underlying vibration.