In 1920 Josef Floch made the following entry in his diary: ‘Looking for pictorial unity through an underlying colour.’ This quest also marks the beginning of a distinctly new and independent approach. Following his early experiments in a traditional naturalistic and Expressionist style, Floch now discovered colour as his prime medium. By strictly limiting his palette to one underlying shade he aimed to avoid the explosions of colour characterizing the Expressionists and to capture form, the world and humanity with greater subtlety, which from the outset had melancholy overtones.
In this half-figure portrait of an unknown girl, the underlying colour is blue, and this is overpainted and interspersed with different shades and hues mixed with green, yellow and violet. The result is an abstract composition of colours draped across the picture like a musical veil, behind which the girl’s figure is rendered in clearly defined outlines. Despite the distinctly modelled body, this portrait has a detached, magical and unreal quality that is typical of Floch’s art as a whole. The painting evokes a great sense of calm; the girl’s pose is relaxed and her hands are daintily folded in her lap. She has a compelling gaze: lucid, direct and highly evocative, her eyes draw the viewer into the picture and this world of colour.

Marianne Hussl-Hörmann

Literature: Karl Pallauf: Josef Floch. Leben und Werk. 1894 – 1977. Österreichischer Kunst– und Kulturverlag. Vienna 2000, ill. p.114, cat. rais. no. 49.