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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
provenance: private collection, Germany – directly bought from the artist in 1978
illustrated in: A. Krapf u.a.: Max Weiler. Werkverzeichnis der Bilder von 1932 bis 1974, Salzburg 1974, catalog raisonné no. 736.
Max Weiler is regarded as one of the most important Austrian painters of the 20th century. Numerous international exhibitions, prestigious public commissions, and major awards attest to his success. In 1937, Weiler participated in the Exposition Universelle 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 professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Weiler’s unmistakable visual language emerged from an almost spiritual dialogue with nature. He described his abstract, gesturally expressive paintings as “a re-creation of nature, without any naturalism, a new emergence 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 vital force that animates nature. They are not static snapshots, but processes – amorphous growth and transformation, an organic whole.
“Mittelmeerische Landschaft” belongs to the body of works known as “landscapes on toned grounds,” a term chosen by the artist himself for the phase between 1969 and 1973, during which he painted not on white grounds but on variously colored pictorial surfaces. The multilayered term “tone” refers to the mysterious power of the ground in different tones of color, which lend the composition an all-pervading tonal base, a unique underlying vibration.