Max Kurzweil

One of my favourite paintings – Max Kurzweil’s Lady in a Yellow Dress. Not the usual pose you might find – it looks like a momentary lapse in a party…. There’s a sense of ’Japonisme’ too if you list the features: tied black hair, pale skin, some floral decorative element. I admire the theoretical simplicity of it – at such an busy time in art,1899, when the Vienna Secession was in full swing, and Klimt and Moser were at the forefront of innovation, cool Max Kurzweil makes such a beautiful portrait and adds nothing of the decoration found in so much of Klimt’s work, as it might distract us from his model’s patient gaze. Though, the way she’s cocked her wrist, I don’t think she was that patient.