Lot 211 D

Josef Scharl's images of people are the expression of a deep interest in humankind. They demonstrate his exceptional capacity for empathy and his fine sense of his subjects' psychology, their fate and essence.
In the context of his painted likenesses, the artist mostly occupied himself with models from his family and closer circle of friends or anonymous portraits of individual types. Our image of the bound thief can be assigned, in a broader sense, to the latter group; its Christian connotation nonetheless makes it an unusual work. As such, it appears to be less the result of an enquiry into the iconography of the Christian salvation story than a (socially) critical consideration of human existence in the face of suffering, misery and death. Thus, with his radical and candid gaze, Scharl has linked himself with contemporaries like Otto Dix or George Grosz - the broad, dynamic brushstrokes stir associations with Vincent van Gogh.
For his intense studies of individuals, Scharl reduces their image to the essential; he requires “no elaborate, genre-like background or other attributes. He succeeds in this with extremely sparing means, such as clothing and a handful of accessory objects or solely composition and perspective. In keeping with this, it is - above all - the faces that speak to us: the essence of humankind is laid bare in their eyes and wrinkles, in the surface and tonality of their flesh, in the attitude of their heads. They contain our past and pose the fearful question of our future” (Andrea Firmenich, Menschenbilder - Zur Ikonographie Josef Scharls, in: Josef Scharl. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, ed. by Andrea Firmenich, Cologne 1999, pp. 39 f.).