(Innsbruck 1932–2011 Vienna)
‘Rouge sur blanc-avant Seckau’ (Sebastianplatz), 1959, signed Prachensky, and ‘1959 Prachensky’ on the reverse of the stretcher, and Prachensky on the canvas, with directional arrow, lacquer on nettle, 150 x 140 cm, framed, (K)

Provenance:
Galerie Wilm Falazik, Bochum, label on the reverse –
here inscribed with the title ‘rouge sur blanc - avant Seggau’.
Private Ownership, Germany

The Rouge sur blanc-avant Seckau series was executed in 1958, at Sebastianplatz in Vienna’s 3rd district, in the studio belonging to his friend Fritz Riedl. A year later the Rouge sur blanc-Sebastianplatz series was executed at the same location.

The titles of the works produced over the next three years, from late 1958, the period of the Gainfarn series, read like an address list: Avant Seckau, Sebastianplatz; Wiesbaden, St. Stephan (the works were painted in the locked gallery), Aschaffenburg and again Sebastianplatz. They are evidence of the artist’s insecure circumstances and need to adopt a provisional lifestyle. This was not an exception in the artist’s biography. Instead, it is the almost consistent communality of the titles, determined by the name of the location: Rouge sur blanc. ...
Sebastianplatz: starting with the concentrated force in its centre, the form extends further into space. However, this is no blow-up as in Gainfarn, instead the same level of concentration and tension is maintained throughout its ever more diverse spread. The risk he takes in balancing the increasingly violent explosion with the simultaneously compressed figures becomes even more daring. And one can see in the brushstrokes that they have been applied with even greater vehemence: the clearer the vision, the more decisive the execution. That was not routine: Prachensky’s technical skills were so advanced that he was able to unify his control of the design with its great spontaneity. It was only possible (at the time) for him to paint like this using a single colour: working with a variety of tones would have limited this spontaneity. Yet it was no longer a uniform red, as in the Gainfarn paintings, but a nuanced one, the result of the variations in force behind its application and overlapping, and with more intensive focal points, richer in its gradations as a consequence of its dynamism. He loved his RED…
Wolfgang Fleischer, Markus Prachensky, published by Löcker, Vienna 1990