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1889 Vienna – 1974 Paris
- Title
- „River Landscape on the Drôme“
- Time
- 1926
- signed
- and dated lower right "Willy Eisenschitz 1926"
- Technique
- oil on canvas
- Measurements
- 20×30 in
Willy Eisenschitz was born in 1889 as the son of a wealthy Jewish lawyer family in Vienna. In 1911, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, but he continued his studies in 1912 at the famous Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Inspired by Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism, Eisenschitz developed a distinctive style characterized by expressive brushstrokes, balanced compositions, and the autonomy of color.
In 1925, Eisenschitz moved to the picturesque town of Dieulefit (literally “God created it”) in the Drôme Provençale. This region, which forms the southern part of the Drôme department, is known for its breathtakingly varied landscapes, lying between the French Alps and Provence. The Drôme river, a turquoise-blue mountain stream with a wide, unregulated gravel bed and constantly changing course, winds through dense forests and past idyllic villages.
The influence of Paul Cézanne (arguably the painter who inspired him the most) is particularly evident in Eisenschitz‘s landscape paintings from this period. Using subtly graduated tones, Eisenschitz created a multifaceted landscape full of details and great compositional balance. The style he developed in those years in the Drôme was extremely well received in Paris and led to the painter‘s first solo exhibition (1926, Galerie Billiet, Paris). The first painting purchased by the French state was also a Drôme landscape, created in the same year (now: Center Georges-Pompidou, Paris, inv. no. JP 388 P).