Reinhold Ludwig Krassnig
Weinlese (Vintage, 1946)
Photo: N. Lackner / UMJ
Reinhold Ludwig Krassnig’s (Linz, 1898, Austria-Hungary–1968, Santander, Spain) Weinlese depicts a vast hilly landscape with people dancing and eating, some of them slightly inebriated. In its immense scale, social truthfulness, and crude humor, the work modestly bows to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel lived in a time of bloody conflicts, even if most of his scenes are set before the Eighty Years’ War, in which the Dutch provinces gained their independence from the Habsburgs. Krassnig’s vintage takes place after a great and tragic war that seems to have been forgotten or drowned in ostentatious celebrations.
Krassnig’s biography is strangely out of tune with his time. He had been a successful painter in the 1930s and moved to Mallorca in 1937, but returned during World War II to live in southern Styria, where he renovated a dilapidated castle. Around 1947, he returned to Mallorca and lived in Spain, where he also bought another castle near Santander, until his death.
Oil on canvas, ca. 262 × 372 cm
Neue Galerie Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum