Four Seasons

The seasons are a popular subject in all artforms, whether literature, painting or music. Invariably the artist’s preoccupation with this eternal cycle also becomes a reflection on birth and decay in nature and in life itself.

Franz Gertsch had long had the idea of a monumental cycle about the seasons. In 2006 the decisive impulse came as he took a new look at the seasonal paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Just as these specialized in the depiction of the artist’s native Flemish landscapes, Gertsch selected a motif in the immediate surroundings of his own house in Rüschegg in the Canton of Bern.

All the photographs were taken from roughly the same spot. In contrast to Bruegel, who put scenes of peasant life into the various seasons, Gertsch confined himself to the nature motif. This is no impressive panorama, no romantically enchanted spot, but just a section of unremarkable forest that could be found anywhere – or nowhere. Its interwoven branches and scrub prevent the viewer from looking in – and thus it turns itself into a theme of the work.

Female Portraits

The unwavering gaze pins the observer. Is it dismissive or melancholy? Defiant or disappointed? The young woman’s expression seems to unite all those characteristics to become nearly as indefinable as that of the Mona Lisa.

Between 1980 and 1986 Franz Gertsch exclusively painted large-format portraits of women. They are very different from his earlier likenesses, in which the models are more clearly shown as individuals, through their jewellery, clothing or the space around them. Back then, viewers invariably asked themselves, Who exactly is that?

In the portraits created since1980, that question is no longer important. They are clearly no longer intended to depict a particular individual: ‘Johanna I’ for example, represents a ‘girl-as-such’. Her presence extends beyond the moment and makes a timeless impression. Gertsch achieved this by reworking in paint the photograph he had taken as source material. He explored structures and relationships, struggling to attain coherence. In an interview, he once said:

‘Every detail, really, every single one – whether the nose or an iris or the background – has the same claim to a position of special importance in the picture.’

Woodcuts

By the mid-1980s Gertsch had reached a pinnacle in terms of painterly perfection and realistic rendering. In 1986 he began to devote himself exclusively to woodcuts. In them Gertsch saw a way of maintaining his realistic style while distancing himself from the model to focus on the depiction of the essential nature of the motif.

And he took up another challenge, as well.

‘It is Yin and Yang, or action and inaction. I’m fascinated by the reduction of being able to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ There’s nothing in between. Either you make a point of light or you make none. It can’t be corrected. That’s important for me; I spent long enough making corrections to my pictures during the time that I was searching – back before I was 40. Now what’s decisive for me is not to be able to make corrections.’

‘Making photorealistic prints using woodcuts – really there’s nothing less suitable. So for this purpose I had to re-invent the woodcut. The points of light, the lighter sections created by denser grooves, the darker sections with just a few or no grooves – that didn’t exist before.’