Sonnenuntergang am Gardasee

A chromatic explosion behind Montebaldo, on the Lago di Garda, expresses Ury's rapture in contemplating the late summer sunset. With crystalline transparency, the light singles out almost abstract masses of colour: the sun has already disappeared behind Montebaldo; the svelt poplars on the shore are dark, intense lines, powerfully cast against the blue-mauve of the mountain. Ury's modernity in the handling of the composition is impressive, especially when one considers that the terminus ante quem for this oil was 1906, the year when Ury left Northern Italy and returned to Germany. The artist's more traditional touch, broken into the thousand facets of the Impressionist coup de pinceau, is here forgotten in favour of a more compact, modernist brushstroke. Together with a new stylistic pagination, the iconography of Sonnenuntergang am Gardasee is rare within the oeuvre of the artist. Lesser Ury, in fact, is better known for his urban Impressionism, featuring street scenes of carriages and cars of Berlin. His intense poetic vein found expression in the representation of the shimmering effects of rain and reflected light in the metropolitan cityscape, but rose to even higher lyrical notes when musing on the natural beauty of the Italian countryside. As K. Schwartz wrote, 'Doch inmitten dieser aufregenden und die Sinne aufpeitschenden Welt blieb er ein Einsamer und es drängte ihn wieder in die stille Natur. Er versteckte sich in verlassenen Landschaftswinkeln, schwelgte im Sonnenlicht, das er in leuchtenden Farben darstellte und träumte in Dämmerstunden, in denen die Töne sanft ineinander bergehen. Und er wurde zum Schöpfer von Stimmungsbildern zartester Lyrik, ein Farbensichter...' (Lesser Ury, Exh. Cat., Bezirksamt Tiergarten, Berlin, 1961, p. 11).