Vorstadt VII 1926

Karl Wiener made this small drawing, Vorstadt VII, with coloured pencils. The colours are so cheerful, like a child's box of crayons spilled across the page. You can see each individual stroke, how the drawing is built up through layers and layers of marks, which is true to how it feels to make art, right? The surface has a lovely texture, with those little marks of the pencils all over the paper. I am drawn to the way Wiener used colour to define the forms, especially how the bright yellows and reds pop against the cooler blues and greens. There’s this one archway, the way the stone is rendered is almost as though you could touch it. It’s solid, and yet also transparent. Wiener reminds me a little of Paul Klee, maybe it’s the playful naivety, the dream-like vision, but also the sense of a solid architectural structure, however skewed it is. But, like all good art, it doesn't give you all the answers, instead it leaves space for imagination and interpretation.