Carl Moll (Austrian, 1861–1945) Venedig, Zattere (Venice)

Exhibited

"Annual Exhibition of the Cooperative of the Visual Artists of Vienna," (Künstlerhaus) April 29-July 4,1926, Vienna, no. 464.

Literature

Jahresausstellung der Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler Wiens, Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler, Wiens, 1926, XLVII, no. 464.
Cornelia Cabuk et al., Carl Moll: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, added online in 2023, cat. no. GE 372 A (illustrated in the online version).

Note

Although he remains relatively unknown outside of his native Austria, Carl Moll was one of the leading artists in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. In 1897, he co-founded the Viennese Secession along with Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann, breaking free from the inherent conformity dictated by Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, to promote new forms of creation. This movement in turn revitalized what was considered to be modern Austrian Art. While Moll was mostly known for the serene and elegant interior scenes he produced throughout his entire career, as exemplified by Weißes Interieur (White Interior) which Freeman's sold for a world-breaking $4.7M in 2021, he also painted colorful landscapes and still lifes, mostly parks and riversides executed en plein air, and inspired by French Impressionism.

In complete reaction against the emerging Cubism and Abstraction, Moll remained a fervent partisan of figurative works, thus implying the creative process always originated from a first-hand visual experience. The present work was executed in 1926, a time when Moll and his wife travelled extensively to Italy and France every winter, especially in cities and villages near the sea, such as Venice. As exemplified in this jeweled work, a view of the Zattere promenade along the Guidecca Canal, Moll adopts a freer style in his late career, made of spontaneous, very fluid and dynamic brushstrokes, as well as a riveting, and joyful color palette that bedazzles the eye. As Cornelia Cabuk puts it, "the experience of Spain and El Greco" in the early 1910s as well as"the music of Mahler" are responsible for this artistic shift, which "led to the gradual emergence of a rhythmically accentuated, free colorism in Moll’s work." This bold chromatic play, paired with the sense of immediacy that the work transpires, channel both the art of Cézanne and Matisse, whom Moll both revered and defended.

Provenance

Richard Herzfeld, New York, New York (acquired at Vienna's Künstlerhaus in 1926).

Private Collection, Maine.

Acquired directly from the above in 2007.

Private Collection, New York.