Lot 30 D

In the early 1920s Albert Birkle created a number of crucifixion scenes which, through the extreme and surreal manner in which they are depicted, visualise images of pure horror. The elongated and emaciated bodies, grotesque faces and lurid palette of these Biblical scenes make it vividly apparent that Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece served as a model.
Birkle has made use of a similarly manneristic visual idiom in the mysterious scene found here. Merlin is depicted as an old man, kneeling naked in the middle of a dense forest divided by a rapidly flowing brook. A deer has trustingly laid its head on his lap. In spite of the colouristic and formal resemblance to the crucifixions, the morbid and tormented effect is absent here, and the scene is instead defined by a certain harmony and calm. The man and his natural surroundings form a unity: the elongated, gaunt limbs of the man and animal correspond to the gnarled branches. The forest is illuminated by a magical, pale-green light that seems to radiate from the brook; the chilly yellowish-green and greyish-blue coloration that results is moderated and, to a certain extent, warmed by the occasional passages of reddish brown. In this early work, Albert Birkle not only displays his affinity for enigmatically surreal subjects, but also the extraordinary power of expression and intensity that would define the entirety of his subsequent oeuvre.