(Bregenz 1893–1939) ‘Stillleben mit Maikätzchen’, signed, dated R. Wacker II. 25, oil on canvas, 58 x 40 cm, framed, (K)

Listed in: Max Haller, Der Maler Rudolf Wacker, Neufeld - Verlag, Lustenau, 1971, catalogue raisonné of the paintings, supplement (ordered chronologically)

Provenance: Family Ownership, Austria

Rudolf Wacker, diary entries:
January 1925
My confidence in painting is worth a lot. I paint with fiery pleasure and that is life. I sense it now: painting is a bedevilled, unending thing. It does not let go of anyone who is enthralled by it! From morning to night, I think of nothing else, and this is the best, most effective way of reviving myself, of restoring myself, of finding the strength again to think of external things, of the affairs of the world.

March 1925
It is a law of mechanics, that any force can be measured by the resistance to it. It is the same thing with the visual. Contrast is resistance. Its purpose is to bring one element to a halt in its encounter with another. It is in this way that the viewer’s consciousness is thrust upon the essential, that is, existence itself. (Eternity cannot be imagined; neither can boundless, empty space.) Excerpt, op. cit.