About this
work
Object details
- Title:
- Development of a Theme in Red: Carnival
- Date:
- 1914
- Dimensions:
- 810 × 640 mm
- Inventory number:
- 4081
- Inscriptions:
- lower right: SCHMALZIGAUG/ 1914
More about this work
Development of a theme in red: Carnival is recognised as the first abstract painting in the history of Belgian art. The word ‘Carnival’ appears to offer a clue, but there is no equivalent figure to be seen. The carnivalesque element lies in the free expression, in the sheer painterly interplay of mainly unmixed colour pigments.
When Schmalzigaug made this work he was corresponding with the Futurist leader Umberto Boccioni. In his letters he began defining his personal and colouristic variant of modernism for the first time. He wrote, for example: ‘I live in the middle of a prism. And the result of this hypnosis of colour? Something carnal, a trembling in the abdomen – a testicular emotion. Why? The Carnival instinct.’
Two years previously, in 1912, he had undoubtedly seen the key abstract work Amorpha: Fugue in two colours (1912) by the Czech artist František Kupka at the Paris Salon des Indépendants. By scratching away blue, red and yellow paint with the back of the brush or a palette knife, Schmalzigaug here brutalised the abstract art that he knew. This looks like an anachronistic painting of the Abstract Expressionist kind. That is why it is not just the most enigmatic work in the artist’s oeuvre, but also his most atypical one. He never again made a painting in the same manner. That does not alter the fact that conceptual painterly innovation in the spirit of the avant-garde is clearly present. A painterly composition can be just plain colour.
In April and May 1914 this work was exhibited in Rome at the Esposizione libera futurista internazionale in the avant-garde gallery of Giuseppe Sprovieri. It was part of an ensemble of six works chosen by the artist himself. Had he lived longer this exhibition would have been the high point of his artistic career. His works were described in the avant-garde journal Lacerba as ‘rhythms of coloured arabesques’.
At the end of 1914 the First World War forced Schmalzigaug to leave Venice. He left this and several other paintings behind, and for more than a century it remained hidden away in Italian and later Swiss collections. It only resurfaced in 2015 at a Swiss auction, and in 2021 the KMSKA added it to its collection with funds supplied by the Vlaamse Topstukkenraad.
When Schmalzigaug made this work he was corresponding with the Futurist leader Umberto Boccioni. In his letters he began defining his personal and colouristic variant of modernism for the first time. He wrote, for example: ‘I live in the middle of a prism. And the result of this hypnosis of colour? Something carnal, a trembling in the abdomen – a testicular emotion. Why? The Carnival instinct.’
Two years previously, in 1912, he had undoubtedly seen the key abstract work Amorpha: Fugue in two colours (1912) by the Czech artist František Kupka at the Paris Salon des Indépendants. By scratching away blue, red and yellow paint with the back of the brush or a palette knife, Schmalzigaug here brutalised the abstract art that he knew. This looks like an anachronistic painting of the Abstract Expressionist kind. That is why it is not just the most enigmatic work in the artist’s oeuvre, but also his most atypical one. He never again made a painting in the same manner. That does not alter the fact that conceptual painterly innovation in the spirit of the avant-garde is clearly present. A painterly composition can be just plain colour.
In April and May 1914 this work was exhibited in Rome at the Esposizione libera futurista internazionale in the avant-garde gallery of Giuseppe Sprovieri. It was part of an ensemble of six works chosen by the artist himself. Had he lived longer this exhibition would have been the high point of his artistic career. His works were described in the avant-garde journal Lacerba as ‘rhythms of coloured arabesques’.
At the end of 1914 the First World War forced Schmalzigaug to leave Venice. He left this and several other paintings behind, and for more than a century it remained hidden away in Italian and later Swiss collections. It only resurfaced in 2015 at a Swiss auction, and in 2021 the KMSKA added it to its collection with funds supplied by the Vlaamse Topstukkenraad.
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