(Innsbruck 1932–2011 Vienna) “Pink on white - Los Angeles”, signed, dated Prachensky 69 and on the reverse signed, dated Markus Prachensky 1969, directional arrow, old adhesive label with title, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 178 cm, on stretcher, (K)

... One underestimates the abundance of variety in desert and steppe; in the endless transparent clarity of the air, itself conveying a feeling of an unbounded lightness, every undulation of the ground and the finest differences in colour become so precise and definitive, to a degree of absoluteness that one never experiences in a softer light; but that which here appears so complete, as if already fixed beyond the dimension of time, constantly mutating in the declining angle of light, shimmering in constantly changing tones, flattening out only to rises again in a new form, and it is exactly in this precision that all the richness lies.
The pictures which Prachensky painted at that time all originated in the female form; from the detail of a nude’s back, the roundness of a bottom, but in the redness of the rocks, increasingly formed as rocks, and finally compacted and polished by wind and sand. Here the reduction of variety went considerably further, to an ultimately ever more compact and simpler form, one which would not have been conceiveable as purely imaginary, for its entire validity and credibility - that strength of conviction, irreducible to a single argument - is due to the fullness of form it embodies/and which throws up protuberances at some of the edges, as if it were impossible to hold so much power together.) Ultimately the California paintings are the most massive and collected of Markus Prachensky’s works….
Wolfgang Fleischer, Markus Prachensky, published by Löcker, Vienna, see ill. 30, 31

Provenance:
Private Collection, Austria