Studio: international art (34.1905)

Two Austrian Painters

been so, brown and grey with very little other storms of wind always beating across the entrance,
colouring. and blowing the canvas here and there, while

Both Herr and Frau Mediz look for new ground she had to beat back the bats with her maulstick,
and out-of-the-way corners for work. They are She was obliged to climb down unknown and
both so fond of rich colouring that they seek untrod paths ; only here and there did she find a
those parts of the earth where Nature is most footing, and in another cave she was forced to live,
profuse in her gifts. They have both endured Before finishing her picture, in order to get the right
the blaze of the sun on the highest points of reflex from above she climbed a hill over thirteen
the Dolomites and other ranges of the South hundred feet high twice a day. This is endurance
Tyrolean mountains, often spending days on for art indeed! The colouring of this picture is
their heights, at different periods of the year, very entrancing. Depict to yourself the clear deep
with no one near, and sleeping under the blue greens of the waters and soft reds of the rocks, and
canopy of heaven. In their open-air existence behind them the dark cave through which the
they have learned the true shades of the rays waters flow; and the contrast to the ice blues of
of the sun as they fall upon earth; and so the glaciers on the Gross Glockner, with the warm
they know full well all the tones, from orange mossy red stones and the grey-blue mists. This
to violet, and from violet to orange. picture also was painted under terrible hardships :

One of Frau Mediz's pictures in tempera is of an five weeks in a little hut on the mountain, and not
underground river in the cave of St. Canzian, near even a bed upon which to stretch her weary limbs
Trieste. It is very dramatic and also very weird. —nothing but the bare ground. This is, indeed,
The colours arising from the misty cave throw a working for art, and the result is very gratifying,
purple shade on the deep green waters of the Recca, On the face of the earth, too, they seek unbeaten
a river scarcely perceptible from above. She paths. The Ice Men (Eismanner), by Karl Mediz,
relates how torturing it was to paint; there were was also painted on the mountains, the men stand-
ing on a piece of rock,
behind them the glaciers :
four men, the oldest ninety
years, with full white
beard reaching to his knee,
leaning on his mountain
stick, the others not much
younger, all weather-
beaten and wearing that
strange look peculiar to
those who spend their lives
in the higher regions.
There is not a detail
forgotten. In Solitude
(Einsamkeit), by Karl
Mediz, we have those
thickly grown pines, al-
ways found in the South
growing in thick forests
near the rocks. The trees
are larger than in nature,
which makes the repre-
sentation more effective.
In the distance we see
heavy thunder clouds
sweeping along. The rocks
are of variegated red and
the sea deep green with a
red reflex. Both husband

: CYPRESSES " BY KARL MEDIZ and wlfe are fond of

96

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