Confession

Vienna in 1920 was the hungry capital of a small new republic, and many of its young painters answered the lost war with pictures about origins, damnation and redemption. Fritz Schwarz-Waldegg signed and dated this canvas that year. The art historian Matthias Boeckl lists it among a run of his allegories from around 1920, with titles such as Fertility, The Awakening and The Redeemer, which carried a longing for a fresh start after the war. Themes that had belonged to the churches were being claimed for secular art. Here a half-naked man faces us, his hands crossed over his chest, his face and body built from thick, broken strokes of pale blue, pink and ochre against a dark ground. The German title, Bekenntnis, can mean a confession, and also a declaration of belief.