'Composition 54/18', oil on canvas, 130 cm x 97 cm, signed, dated 54, signed on verso, 'Comp. 54/18' titled, numbered and dated, partially minimally stained, literature: Wvz. Velte 1954/18, with ill. p. 105.
''I am a painter, and my pictures stand for me.'' - Otto Ritschl ''Art is the nourishment for the core of man's being, the ego'', is how the Hessischer Rundfunk gave an insight into Otto Ritschl's artistic work in 1965. The artist initially pursued this understanding of art and its meaning in the field of words and writing. At the beginning of the 20th century, he became known for his literary work, especially for his prose and plays. Towards the end of the First World War, the misery of the returning troops gripped him existentially: on the back wall of a large mirror he drew skulls piled up with charcoal - like for many artists of his generation, a turn in life occurred in the 1920s after the catastrophe of the war, which also had an effect as a change in his artistic work. Ritschl turned to painting, educated himself as an autodidact and looked at a wide variety of styles: from New Objectivity and Expressionism to Cubism and Surrealism. During his study trips, he became acquainted with hitherto unknown forms of expression in the artistic work of his colleagues Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Max Ernst. These encounters again led to a change in his own painting style and even to his own destruction of previously created works. Through the founding of the Freie Künstlerschaft Wiesbaden, he came into contact with artists such as Alexej von Jawlensky. In 1933 Ritschl presented his paintings at an exhibition in the Folkwang Museum in Essen, which was closed by the National Socialist rulers. From then on, Otto Ritschl's art was considered degenerate and could no longer be shown in public. He paused his art for a time during the Second World War. ''Every external image is the image of an internal image. The image is not created, it is fought for.'' Likewise, over his creative years, the artist developed a formal language all his own: Complete abstraction in form and colour make up his works, which, as here, feature filled-in basic geometric forms. Yet the respective composition is broken in its rigidity by unexpectedly dynamic lines, allowing movement and dynamism in the picture that the eye follows.
Painting 54/18 itself stands in Ritschl's transitional phase from figuration to abstraction. A highly exciting and interesting period in Ritschl's work! Similar paintings from this period (54/9-11) are in important museum collections, such as the Von-der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal and the Städtische Kunstsammlung Karlsruhe. Other works from 1954 are in the collections of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt (54/16), the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (54/17) and the Karl Ströher Collection, Darmstadt (54/19).
