Otto Ritschl Erfurt 1885 - 1976 Wiesbaden

Literature

„OTTO RITSCHL", KUNSTVEREIN HANNOVER 1962
 MARIA VELTE, "OTTO RITSCHL LEBEN UND WERK“, MITTELRHEIN MUSEUM DER STADT KOBLENZ 1970, P. 133

After a long creative hiatus due to the turmoil of the World War, Otto Ritschl's works initially hark back to the aesthetic tradition of Modernism of the 1930s, before the artist dealt with the art of Pablo Picasso. Otto Ritschl only breaks away slowly from these role-models, but then started painting and composing abstract works as deeply medial and energetic images, whose content must nevertheless be understood symbolically. Ritschl's paintings created in the 1950s represent the culmination of his artistic output. The present work, Composition 1959/39, was created a year after the death of his wife and, after the long and intensive artistic examination of life and death, shows both a new idea of form and color and the complete detachment of geometric-constructivist forms. The work stands at the transition from clearly delineated areas of color to later cloud-like and blurred forms.