Mountainscape 

August Babberger created this intriguing "Mountainscape" with pastel on paper. At first glance, the scene appears to be a landscape, but look closer and you will notice something more. The entire composition is formed by short strokes of green, brown, purple, and blue. Babberger presents us with a kind of visual puzzle, one that challenges our habits of perception. Rather than offering a realistic depiction of the Swiss Alps, the artist presents a field of color and form. Individual strokes work together to create shapes of mountains, but do not quite resolve into a coherent, naturalistic scene. The materiality of the pastel marks also invites us to appreciate the artwork’s surface, which is composed of independent units. This approach reflects an early modernist concern with the elements of artmaking, where line and color become subjects in themselves, freed from the constraints of representation. The landscape therefore becomes a pretext for exploring pure form.