Farbstudien, 10 Blätter VIII

Karl Wiener was an Austrian draftsman, graphic artist, and photomontage artist, born in 1901. He worked as a bank clerk in Graz and Munich before beginning his art training at twenty-three at the State Art School in Graz, later studying at the Vienna School of Applied Arts under Bertold Löffler. His father was a proofreader at a Social Democratic printing press, and Wiener's own political convictions shaped his later work — his satirical photomontages from the 1930s and 40s earned him the posthumous title "the Austrian John Heartfield." He died in 1949. Farbstudien, 10 Blätter VIII is one of a series of ten color studies from 1923 — vertical washes of watercolor bleeding into one another across the paper. Orange, rust, yellow, coral pink, and deep violet run from top to bottom, pooling and feathering where the colors meet.