Carl Schmitt's Art
Colum, Padraic
CARL SCHMITT'S ART By PADRAIC COLUM ' I* HE most memorable pictures by a present-day ¦*¦ painter that I have seen in a long time are being exhibited in the Park Avenue Galleries. They are by...
...Practically all are religious paintings, religious, not merely because they deal with traditional sacred subjects, but because they come out of those exaltations that set us above the temporal world...
...In all these religious paintings there is something that is very seldom found in the art of today, that is as rare in painting as it is rare in poetry葉he quality of rapture...
...as though at a distance one sees a man who has become still with some thought or memory...
...This is magnificent as decoration擁t is like a mosaic in its reds and blues and gold...
...Those exaltations are always on the verge of passing into exultations...
...The Madonna in Orange is a strange and very memorable picture預 childlike Madonna with curiously long eyes and an orange band around her: the colors are strange葉hey are like metal rimmed with flame...
...There is an Annunciation in which there is a single figure葉he Virgin with hands folded and raised accepting with startled reverence the word given her...
...There is one portrait here用ortrait of Michael Monahan: it is only a sketch...
...There is another angel among the thirteen paintings葉he Angel of the Resurrection, who stands with up-pointing hands in a crumbling world: this figure in red and white is the most austere that Carl Schmitt has painted...
...a remarkable technical accomplishment in this painting makes the eyes so watchful, so unbaffled...
...it is so sympathetically painted that one accepts it as a revelation of the sitter...
...There are two Gethsemanes among the paintings...
...he gives us rapture most often, he gives us gaiety sometimes...
...Thus in the painting, named Immanent Trinity Decoration, the crucified figure is laid upon colors so rich as to make us understand that the earth is not dull and inert, but is like a bouquet of flowers, or a casket of jewels...
...There is gaiety, there is playfulness even in the Madonna in White, in which a happy babe is held by a happy mother, and four sturdy children have the place of heraldic supports...
...And as like as this to a mosaic is another picture to a wood-carving: this is the Guardian Angel that has such a quality of fulness that it seems to be solid...
...the one that impressed me most is the Gethsemane in Blue in which the figure of Christ is not bowed, but upheld, a figure of great tension...
...They are by Carl Schmitt and they number only thirteen...
...For austerity is not the mark of this religious painter...
...she is not childlike, this Virgin with the golden-brown eyes, but one who has toiled and waited...
...I had seen some of these pictures before and in a place that had a different atmosphere from that of a...
...Then there is The Madonna with Milk-bottle in which we have a modern type in a beautiful design...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 6
