Apocalyptic Landscape

© Ludwig Meidner-Archiv, Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
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Apocalyptic Landscape

Germany, 1913
Paintings
Oil on canvas
37 1/2 × 31 5/8 in. (95.25 × 80.33 cm)
Gift of Clifford Odets (60.65.1b)
Modern Art
Currently on public view:
Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Since gallery displays may change often, please contact us before you visit to make certain this item is on view.

Provenance

The artist (1884-1966). Clifford Odets (1906-1963); given in 1960 to the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art; transferred in 1961 to LACMA.

Label

Painted a year before the first shot would be fired in World War I, Apocalyptic Landscape is an uncanny premonition of the cataclysm the war would bring....
Painted a year before the first shot would be fired in World War I, Apocalyptic Landscape is an uncanny premonition of the cataclysm the war would bring. Under a turbulent sky, a city street appears to fracture as the earth quakes and figures run chaotically in the foreground. Though the scene owes much to the dynamism and energetic brushwork characteristic of Italian Futurism that Meidner saw at a Berlin gallery a few months before this painting was completed, it is a decidedly Expressionist work, linking an emotional state with the scene depicted. One of approximately fifteen apocalyptic landscapes Meidner would paint between 1912 and 1916, this work is double-sided, since canvas was in short supply. On the reverse is a portrait of artist Willy Zierath.

Wall label, 2021.
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Bibliography

  • Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.

  • Barron, Stephanie et al., German Expressionism 1915-1925: The Second Generation. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.

  • Barron, Stephanie et al., German Expressionism 1915-1925: The Second Generation. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Eliel, Carol S. The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Ludwig Meidner. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Benson, Timothy O., et al. Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1993.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin.  Marsden Hartley.  Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2002.
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
  • Parfrey, Adam.  "Bourne Yesterday."  Performing Arts Magazine: 16 (May 2001).
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