Frau aus Pozzuoli

Frau aus Pozzuoli (Woman from Pozzuoli) was painted in 1925. It was begun in Naples before Schad moved to Vienna in the summer, and completed in the Austrian capital shortly after the artist moved into a splendid new studio in the Habsburgerstrasse 1, by the Graben, towards the end of the year. Depicting a proletarian factory worker from the Neapolitan industrial suburb of Pozzuoli, this sharply observed and objective portrait of contemporary contrasts marks the final transition of Schad's Italian-born style into the slick, obsessive and precisely rendered 'Neue Sachlichkeit' that distinguished his work in Vienna and Berlin.

The three years that Schad spent in Italy between 1922 and 1925 resulted in a complete transformation of his art. It was the Renaissance art he saw in Rome and Raphael's La fornarina in particular, that prompted Schad to recognise his future path as an artist and to attempt a modern realism. It was also in Rome that Schad met his future wife Marcella Arcangeli. 'For me' Schad later recalled, 'Italy opened my eyes as to what I wanted to do and to what I could do. Nowhere is the difference between art and kitsch so self-evident as in Italy. There are many great paintings by great artists on view there. In the museums certainly. The art is old. And this old art is often newer than the new art... In Italy, I found my way' (Christian Schad, in exh. cat., Christian Schad, op. cit.)

But, although Rome proved influential, it was Naples that determined the direction in which his art developed. It was there that Schad settled and it was there that the foundations of his cold, surgically precise and almost hyper-real style of objective realism were laid. Developing a unique technique based on the subtle glazing of the old-masters, in which a gradual build-up of near transparent layers of paint lends the surface a vibrant luminosity, Schad originated in Naples a cool, sharp, incisive and seemingly brushless style of portraiture that is now widely regarded as the epitome of the Neue Sachlichkeit. In particular, Schad recalled, it was the fiery city atmosphere of Naples, where he decided to live and which, throughout his life, he would never forget, that brought home to him how sharpness and clarity of image could be used in a revelatory way to suggest an almost magic reality. 'Nothing was cut and dried there,' he said, 'things could emerge out of the multifarious and twilight sides of life at any time. Every day the strangest things happen, which might, depending on one's views, be taken as diabolical, magical or fateful.' It was, he recalled in his memoirs, this 'volcanic temperament' in the Neapolitan atmosphere that caused him to focus intently on 'the here-and-now, instead of the hereafter,' and, paradoxically perhaps, to 'bestow sharper outlines on every-day life in all its various manifestations' (Christian Schad, Relative Realitäten, Erinnerungen an Walther Serner, Augsburg, 1999, p. 72).

It is precisely these qualities that are embodied in Frau aus Pozzuoli. The composition is, in many respects, a classical one - a seated figure in front of a window looking out onto a landscape. With the introduction of an exterior view through the window and in particular with the form of the window's frame echoing that of a picture frame, this picture-within-a-picture immediately suggests a disparity and the possibility of multiple realities existing within the same picture. A Neapolitan woman, healthy, romantic, depicted as passionate, fills the picture space by seeming almost confined in a small interior that is directly contrasted with the grey empty industrial landscape of Pozzuoli and the factory behind her. This harsh pictorial juxtaposition between sitter and background is a playful pictorial device that Schad would develop with increasing frequency over the next few years, presenting his sitters set against dramatic and often emblematic vistas of modern life. It is a device that both fulfills a narrative function and at the same time questions the apparent realism of the picture. Enhanced by the illusionism of his fastidious painterly style, this simultaneous presentation of twin, but contrasting views illuminated by the same light and delineated with equal clarity and precision, has the effect of undermining the apparent trustworthiness of the image as a whole. Seducing the eye, it asserts a pictorial reality all of its own, while also revealing objective photographic realism, and, by implication, our conventional perception of reality itself, to be an artifice, a thin cinematic-like surface - an illusory web of fascinating and for Schad, often symbolic, detail. This playful game of perception is augmented at the top of the painting where a mirror and a veil are shown appended to each corner.

Seated in front of the window/picture, the unknown Italian woman in this painting seems almost posed before a portrait detailing the grey emptiness of her daily life. This approach towards social commentary is one typical of much Neue Sachlichkeit work and, to some extent the Italian novecento movement, but it is a rare move for Schad. The poignancy of this contrast is further enhanced by a few natural symbols, which, typically for Schad, are placed with prominence and precision within the picture. Two flowers beneath the mirror at the top left of the painting clearly hint at the romantic nature of the sitter and/or her longing for love, while the butterfly climbing the window frame seems also to symbolise her romantic leaning. Shown walking along the edge of the window frame in front of the depressingly empty and barren landscape with its grey colours and factory chimney, the contrast between it and its background seems representative of this Neapolitan woman's situation as a whole. Schad often recalled the passion and 'volcanic temperament' he had witnessed in the Neapolitans and it is this aspect of Neapolitan life thrown into direct opposition with the seemingly bland conformity required by modern industrialised living that is depicted in this work. Something of the slight look of sadness and appeal in the woman's face seems to confirm this.

In the catalogue notes to this painting which Schad helped to prepare for the retrospective of his work in Berlin in 1980, it is suggested that when the artist was completing this painting in Vienna, he began to bestow this unknown woman from Pozzuoli with the features of his wife Marcella. The prettiness of the woman's eyes and the sharp assuredness in the way in which her features have been rendered all recall Schad's portraits of Marcella and this has led some commentators to confuse this work as being a portrait of Schad's beautiful but 'eccentric wife'. Schad was to paint an important portrait Marcella in the year that followed this painting, depicting her seated in front of a balcony looking out onto the backstreets of Montmartre, and both these paintings were evidently of some importance to Schad. A 1926 photograph of his illustrious studio in Vienna shows Frau aus Pozzuoli proudly displayed on the easel and along with the1926 portrait of Marcella, the painting was chosen by the artist for his first major solo exhibition at the Kuntshandlung Würthle in Vienna in 1927.