Ascending Moon

Josef Scharl was a German expressionist painter born in Munich in 1896. The Nazis banned him from painting in 1933 and included his work in a "degenerate art" exhibition in Nuremberg in 1935; he emigrated to New York in 1938. He died there in December 1954, the same year he painted Ascending Moon. A yellow-orange moon floats at the top of a deep blue sky, surrounded by concentric rings in teal, silver-gray, and pale blue. The composition is built from overlapping curves and arcs that read as both a celestial geometry and an elaborate instrument — an astrolabe, a compass, a structure for measuring the sky. The paint is thin and the canvas weave shows through everywhere. The title and signature are inscribed at the bottom: "Ascending Moon" at left, "Jos. Scharl 1954" at right.