City River

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

This tiny, fantastic cityscape seems to contain skyscrapers (some stacked up like blocks), neurotic trees, a UFO, and a wide river navigated by various vessels, including sailboats, a tall ship, a scull, and perhaps a submarine. The composition resembles the city-mountains that Wols had begun to paint in the early-to-mid-1940s—but he more commonly used gouache, tube marks, and especially explosive or branching forms from c. 1946, perhaps to emphasize meetings between the plastic and nonobjective worlds.

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