Samuel Mutzner

SAMUEL MUTZNER (Bucharest, Romania, 1884 - 1959).
Untitled.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed.
Measurements: 35,5 x 43 cm.
The painting presents a female figure seated on a rocky promontory, bathed by the warm light of the sunset. Executed with a vigorous impasto and loose brushstroke, the composition evidences Samuel Mützner's interest in chromatic vibration and the immediate capture of the landscape. The woman, with a tanned torso and a contemplative attitude, is silhouetted against the sea, whose blue and turquoise tones unfold in wide, modulated patches. In the background, a boat with tall sails introduces a vertical axis that balances the oblique dynamism of the body. The pictorial matter, dense and expressive, gives the scene an almost tactile quality, while the contrast between the warm lands of the foreground and the freshness of the maritime horizon intensifies the sensation of luminous stillness. The painting functions as an instant of stillness, where figure and nature are integrated in an atmosphere of introspection and serenity.
Mutzner, a Hebrew from a modest family, was initially trained at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, with masters such as Eugen Voinescu, Wladimir Hegel and George Demetrescu. Some time later he moved to Munich, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Art. At the age of 19 he traveled to Paris, then the center of experimentation of the artistic avant-garde, and enrolled at the innovative Académie Julian, where he graduated in 1908. In Paris he was seduced by the painting of the Impressionists and even settled for a time in Giverny, next to Claude Monet, to paint landscapes with the master. Mutzner lived a remarkably nomadic life, traveling to Algeria, Tunisia and Japan, where he stayed for three years, between 1912 and 1915. His "Grand Tour" would also take him to Oceania and South America, where he lived for three years, mainly in Venezuela, specifically in Caracas, revolutionizing the local art scene. In 1923 he returned to his native Romania, where he married the painter Rodica Maniu. Perhaps to the influence of his wife and to his residence in the small village of Oltenia is due the interest in this stage of the artist for the themes directly extracted from the Romanian rural life. The peasants, the villages, the cultivated fields fill his canvases in these years. The painter and Rodica painted, sometimes, the same landscapes, but in different versions from different points of view. From the 1940s onwards, the artist gradually withdrew from public and artistic life. His work is preserved in important museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas, the Museum of Art of Constance and important European private collections.
Samuel Mutzner's style is rooted in impressionism, especially in the luminous aspect represented by Claude Monet. His painting presents an agile and free brushstroke, somewhat undone, and a chromatic range where warm tones predominate, juxtaposed in a way that, at times, approaches the investigations of the pointillists. In the work created during his stay in Japan, such as the one we now present, the artist evokes its millenary culture, impregnated with a halo of mystery and intimacy, as in this interior inhabited by two geishas next to a fish tank in which a red carp swims.