Spanish reflexions - Reflejos de España

Over twenty years ago, a journey through Spain led Hannes Schwarz to change from the "reality of suffering" he had mainly concentrated on until then to a peaceful wide landscape that acted as an invitation to harmonious composure, and that appreciated calming nature as a partner in this ongoing dialogue.

Hannes Schwarz on his recent paintings:

These landscapes do not depict particular motifs. The idyll is not intentional. These works were not executed directly from nature. However, it must be pointed out that they were directly inspired by Andalusia. That is where the experience happened.

Back home, in my studio, the "big emotion" that I had experienced in that landscape was filtered, imbued with thought, raised to a universal level. A process of conversion and implementation began.

Thus something was created that is - at least in my opinion - significant for our contemporary situation because it depicts an experience of nature that seems typical for our period (space travel, satellite pictures).

The fragments of landcape in these paintings are surrounded by a cosmos whose eerie boundlessness seems to exude an icy cold. One can feel this in all the paintings. If this creates a feeling of being lost it is not surprising because unbounded lonelyness endangers all existence.

However, this emotional state may also lead to our overbred individualism encountering a barrier which might help it to relax a little.

These paintings are not a gestural reaction to a particular moment in time, not a reflex to a stimulus, but the result of focussed, persistant work. Thus the spontaneous has been drawn out as it were, with the resulting creative process continually checked by reflection.