Franz Radziwill - Der Winter ist schön

Franz Radziwill

Der Winter ist schön
1963

Oil on canvas on panel. 58.5 x 80.8 cm. Framed by the artist. Signed 'Franz Radziwill' in red lower right. Inscribed with work number '557' in red-brown verso. - In very good condition with fresh colours.

There can scarcely be another artist who had Franz Radziwill’s ability to imbue a naturalistic landscape with unearthly and mysterious elements, combining the beautiful with the unfathomable.
Here, he has composed a nocturnal winter landscape in a richly detailed manner of painting. The snow-covered plain is divided up through a stand of bare deciduous trees and a row of evergreens with three buildings nestled up against them. But this rural idyll is filled with elements that do not seem to be of this world. Menacing, amorphously fissured boulders grow up out of the earth in the foreground, and the gigantic celestial disc floating above it all is reminiscent of a machine component. The palette of colours breaking through the natural brown, grey and white of a winter night is also surreal. The sky, which features a pink crescent moon, glows in broad strips of cobalt blue and green while the celestial disc shines in yellow and red like an artificial sun. The colours radiate down on to the landscape and streaks of them spread through the snow. A mysterious apparition between the two groups of trees leads a chromatic life of its own, and its gently curving arabesques call to mind a bodiless dancing dervish.
“Der Winter ist schön” formerly belonged to the collection of Georg Düser (1888-1982). This neurologist and writer from Oldenburg was interested in art and, after he met Franz Radziwill in Dangast in 1923, a close friendship bound the two men for the rest of their lives. Extremely fascinated by the artist’s work, Düser very methodically built up a significant collection of paintings over the decades, playing an essential part in Franz Radziwill’s increasing popularity.

Catalogue Raisonné

Firmenich/Schulze 762

Provenance

Former Georg Düser Collection, Oldenburg; Galerie St. Gertrude, Hamburg; Private ownership, North Germany

Literature

Wilhelm Gilly, Bildbeschreibungsversuche und Interpretationsvorschläge, in: exhib. cat. Stadtmuseum Oldenburg 1980, p. 119 ("Winterwind"); Peter Reindl (ed.), Franz Radziwill, Landesmuseum Oldenburg, Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts im Augusteum (Kataloge des Landesmuseums Oldenburg vol. 1), Oldenburg 1981, colour illus. 43, p. 84, p. 108 ("Winterwind")

Exhibitions

Oldenburg 1980 (Stadtmuseum), Franz Radziwill 85 Jahre - Gemälde aus der Sammlung Düser, cat. no. 45 with colour illus. p. 74