Strasse in Tiergarten mit Siegessäule

The greater part of Lesser Ury's life was spent in Berlin. The artist's oeuvre is centered around life in the German capital and stylistically he is considered one of Germany's outstanding Impressionists. His favourite subjects were intimate café scenes, carriages and later taxis plying the rain swept streets, overcast, dramatic skies and sunlight playing off wet leaves. His intense poetic nature found expression in the shimmering effects of rain and reflected light in the metropolitan cityscape. He was a master of interpreting the changing moods and temperament of this great city. "Above all, he remains a subtle colourist. Martin Buber wrote of his work: 'He belonged among those Promethean natures that always seek a new language, capable of expressing everything... He found this language in his use of colour. Form expresses none of the ambiguous relationships between things, their effects on each other... A thing does not exist in itself, but everything exists in everything. Form divides, but colour unites.'" (E. M. Namenyi, "Jewish Impressionists" in C. Roth's Jewish Art, Jerusalem, 1971, p. 200)