#Psychological portraiture series

In his evocative oil painting of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (c.1990), his dramatic and Rembrandt-esque use of chiaroscuro imbues the вЂauthorportraitвЂ™ with an emotional intensity. KГ¶hler always varied his artistic style to match the subject. It seems as if Kohler was searching, through his medium, to uncover the essence of JoyceвЂ™s creativity, which is as much a dark power, as it is brilliant. Yet it nails the figurative basics: JoyceвЂ™s wire-brush moustache, his Coke-bottle-thick glasses, his thin tapering chinвЂќ. There is a gestural quality to this work as Michael Upchurch, the Seattle Times arts critic points out, вЂњink, splattered and sponged onto the uneven paper surface, pushes toward abstraction. This haunting India ink collage drawing takes as its subject the author of Ulysses, and his tragic loss of sight. As KГ¶hler explained, вЂњMaybe I am looking for the overtones of a visage, the poetic dimension.вЂќДЄnother exceptional portrait is James Joyce вЂ“ Getting Blind, executed around 1995, which belongs to Richard Hugo House in Seattle. There is a fragility to this fragmented portrait, which deconstructs the writer into his creative essence. With pencil and ink on paper, he has mapped out with rough strokes, reminiscent of Egon SchieleвЂ™s expressive line, the creases of the authorвЂ™s face, and his notoriously dishevelled haircut. One of the most striking examples is a mixed media portrait of the avant-garde writer Samuel Beckett (c.1990).

#Psychological portraiture series

KГ¶hler created visual manifestations of their works that he had read in a series of вЂauthorportraitsвЂ™, which have recently been part of solo retrospectives across America. KГ¶hlerвЂ™s son, Henry, recalls that, вЂњthe old gramophone was always playing classical music on a very high volume in my fatherвЂ™s studio while he was workingвЂќ.ДЄ literary enthusiast, KГ¶hler also depicted many distinguished writers, including Virginia Woolf, Jean Cocteau, and Simone de Beauvoir. The artistвЂ™s mother, Lisa KГ¶hler, was a well-educated concert-hall singer, who instilled in her son a love for classical music, ballet and the theatre. KГ¶hler painted numerous other composers, including Sibelius, Mahler, Mozart and Stravinsky. Intersecting circles, which represent his curled hair, also cleverly signify the shape of musical notes. In his oil collage of Johannes Sebastian Bach (c.1990) he has wittily incorporated BachвЂ™s sheet music and typeset initials, which become an intrinsic part of the rhythmic composition. Intrigued by their Synthetic Cubism, KГ¶hler began to experiment with the possibilities of collage as an aesthetic of modernity, assimilating this technique into his own practice. It was in Paris that he was introduced to the Cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Most significantly, in 1951 he travelled to Paris, which at this time was the centre of the Western art world. Recognised early on for his artistic talent, KГ¶hler was awarded numerous state scholarships, which allowed him to travel far beyond Sweden to Norway, Egypt, Spain, and France. During this time he exhibited paintings at FГ¤rg och Form, a contemporary gallery in Stockholm, which Erixson had founded to showcase the radical works of the neo-expressionist painters, who were experimenting with a new form of art defined by its decorative, colourful and freely executed style. He studied at the Swedish Royal Academy of Art from 1945-1951, where he was taught by one of the great Swedish modernists, Sven вЂњX-etвЂќ Leonard Erixson. KГ¶hler was a neo-modernist painter, who practised and exhibited in leading circles of Swedish art during the 20th century. His late works show an artist further reducing and abstracting the human form in his search for immutable identity. Bordering on abstraction, these portraits reveal the expressive powers of Kohler, who used a variety of media and styles to capture each subjectвЂ™s presence, personality and вЂњpoetic dimensionвЂќ. In recent years Carl KГ¶hler (1919 вЂ“ 2006) has gained recognition, particularly for his psychologically charged portraits of distinguished writers, artists, composers and musicians.