Alfons Walde

The figure of the peasant occupied Walde throughout his entire oeuvre. In memorable pictorial subjects, he depicted the typical peasant, embedded in their landscape and way of life. His interest was not in the theme of peasant labor, but rather in the atmosphere of Sundays and holidays. The motif of the "Church Steps" is based on the pictorial concept of "going to church," which Walde had developed as early as 1914 and further developed in its present form from 1920 onwards. After Sunday mass, churchgoers are depicted descending the church steps in their festive attire. In the closely cropped image, a churchgoer with a girl on her right and a boy on her left is centrally positioned in the immediate foreground. Behind them follow a man and a woman in red-orange cloaks, while at the very top, cut off by the edge of the picture, only a fragment of another figure can be discerned. The background is summarily indicated with a quick stroke. Walde skillfully lends his composition dynamism by contrasting the forward-directed step of the woman with the lilac apron with her sideways glance. He deliberately avoids a closer physiognomic characterization and shaping of the individual, thus creating archetypes: his churchgoers are representatives of a universal situation. With sensitive and precise observation, the artist immortalizes this deeply felt, lived tradition, the everyday life, the holidays, and the churchgoing of peasant life, which today is part of the enduring heritage of Tyrolean culture. With an artistic vocabulary shaped by personal encounters with Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in pre-war Vienna, Alfons Walde's second important creative phase began in the decade after the First World War. Key works such as the monumental "City in Snow (Kitzbühel)" or also the early version of the soon-to-be famous series of churchgoing and encounters impressively demonstrate for the first time a reduction of color and form in the sense of the expressive and the monumental. Compared to his pre-war work, the objective here appears to be condensed into large stylized areas of color, with strong silhouette effects, largely unmodulated color, and a tense, compact composition.