Woman in Yellow

Max Kurzweil was an Austrian painter and printmaker, who contributed to the early stages of the Art Nouveau style. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna but traveled to Paris at the age of 25 to continue his studies. It was in Paris where Kurzweil first exhibited his paintings and began to develop his own style.

While in France, Kurzweil was drawn to harbor towns and developed a fondness for painting the ships, sailboats, and people that populated these seaside areas. It was in the harbor town of Concarneau that he met his wife Martha Guyot. Kurzweil became especially adept at how to use light in his work through painting outdoors. After Kurzweil returned to Vienna, he founded, along with Klimt and other artists, a movement called the Vienna Secession that completely rejected the Viennese association of artists. The movement was heavily influenced by French impressionism.

Woman in Yellow is a painting of his wife Martha lounging on a faded, patterned couch. The bright, gorgeous yellow color of her dress dominates the painting and is in contrast to the muted background. The dress flows down and around the seat as the woman stretches her pale arms across the back of the sofa; the look on her face can be interpreted by the viewer but I see a strong, slightly perturbed, tired woman who would like the posing to end sooner rather than later.

Kurzweil later became a professor at an academy in Vienna for female artists and it was there that he met a student, Helene Heger, and began a love affair. In 1916, at age 49, Kurzweil shot and killed his lover and then killed himself, putting an early end to what was a noteworthy and eclectic career.

- Heidi Werber