Josef Scharl (1896–1954)

‘Everything about Scharl was true, genuine, and unspoiled. He had gazed into the tragedy and abyss of human existence and had a deeper capacity for suffering than most men…’ –Albert Einstein.
Elegantly dressed in glamorous evening attire, the crowd of people that fill Josef Scharl’s Grosse Gesellschaft/Theaterpause offer a glimpse into the bustling, exciting nightlife of Munich at the end of the Weimar Republic. Adopting a high perspective, so that a cross-section of the crowd is visible, Scharl grants each of his characters an individuality within the scene, focusing on the subtle shifts in skin tone, hairstyle, and details of clothing that single them out amongst the throng of people that fill the space. By enlarging and elongating the eyes of each of his characters, Scharl captures an impression of how each individual’s perception of the crowd is shaped by their own personal experience, their varying directions of their gazes suggesting the chance encounters, interactions, and meetings that can occur in such a setting. The vigorous application of paint, meanwhile, illustrates Scharl’s debt to the art of Vincent van Gogh, the rhythmically swirled, heavy impasto surface a play of short, sharp brushstrokes heavily laden with pigment. The socio-critical tone of Scharl’s compositions drew the ire of the National Socialists during the 1930s, with several of his paintings being removed from national museums, and the artist fled to America in 1939 to escape persecution.