(Innsbruck 1932–2011 Vienna)
‘Puglia Marina - 10 - 1978’, signed and dated Prachensky 78, as well as titled, signed, dated on the reverse Prachensky 1978, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 160 cm, on stretcher, (K)

Full-page illustration:
Manfred de la Motte, Markus Prachensky, Galerie Hennemann, Bonn, 1979, p. 29

Provenance:
From an Austrian Collection

... the whole coastal region between the Murge, a limestone plateau, and the sea. ‘The point’ from which he wante to start his new enterprise ‘was three hundred kilometres long’.
This needed its own gestation period and preparation. He called this series of paintings Puglia marina, where the Italian word marina denotes both a coastal region and a so-called seapiece, or marine, in traditional local painting. Puglia marina was not a completely new approach; rather, it drew the layers of S. Angelo Duke closer together, arranged the circles closer to the centre, grew visibly larger in its horizontal format, as is typical of a seapiece, offering a solution that is not simpler but perhaps easier to perceive. The orange colours have become an increasingly brighter and harder yellow, the clearly defined colours are equal to each other in importance; the balance appears to match the age of the landscape.
But Apulia is also an old cultural landscape. More recent traces of human activity could scarcely be integrated in the paintings, since they would mostly destroy the existing unity. During the Romantic period, materials and style were much more in keeping with the landscape, realised an already existing potential and were per se an interpretation of that which already existed. The 300 kilometre long point is full of magnificent old towns such as Barletta, Trani, Molfetta, Bitonto, Ostuni; and the buildings of previous epochs became for Prachensky an increasingly vital element of Apulia. With overlaid, intersecting architectural elements – especially from Ruvo to Trani – vertical components representing man’s constructions were added to the horizontal layers. And the circle, as the shape of the rose windows of cathedrals, gained an additional meaning. On raw canvas he was able to shape all nuances between those sharp edges, visible with harsh light, and glazed borders; and by every increase in expressive possibility a further degree of concentration was made possible...

Wolfgang Fleischer, Markus Prachensky, Löcker Verlag, Vienna, 1990