(Oberndorf 1891–1958 Kitzbühel) “Alpensommer”, 1936, signed A. Walde and printed label verso: Alfons Walde Kitzbühel, Tyrol, Austria, handwritten addition by the artist, “Alpensommer” 1936, oil on cardboard, 48 x 69 cm, framed, (K)

Provenance:
Dorotheum Kunstpalais, 643rd art auction, 13 - 20 March 1984, cat. no. 309, plate 129
Private Ownership, Kitzbühel

The ‘Landschaftsbild-Wettbewerb’ [Landscape competition], 1924 was a starting point for Walde, leading him to a more simple, more spaciously conceived view of nature. The full power of the expressive post-war pictures and the severity, as a whole, of the natural forms, as he perceived them, were now drawn into his compositions. The broad mountain ridges around Kitzbühel and, rising in the background, the Wild Kaiser mountain range become a lesson in landscape per se. Almost primeval and amorphous in their massive quality, the planes and volumes always tend towards a modelled three-dimensionality, although this appears to be balanced with a tremendous sensitivity. The various elements of this landscape, the houses, the huts, the roofs and areas of shadow have been consciously intertwined to form a harmonious whole and are not arranged just for effect. Again and again new nuances are achieved by the artist in his soft application of paint, in part painted in dry impasto; there is a new interplay of light values, which vibrate over all of the natural forms depicted. Landscape also means for him a contrast with the sky. He seldom takes the mountains right up to the upper visual frame; the intense blue of the sky is always a key visual element, part of the structuring the picture. Walde heightens his landscape compositions by emphasising the slightly raised foreground, the deeply indented middle ground and the high rearing mass of the mountains in the background with their appearance of stage flats. He hardly ever encloses his compositions to the sides when painting these motifs. A panorama effect predominates. ... Gert Ammann, Alfons Walde, 1891–1958, 4th edition 2001, Verlagsanstalt Tyrolia, Innsbruck 2001