Le fauteuil rouge

Zoran Mušič's painting Le fauteuil rouge, painted in 1996, marks the chronological endpoint of the Hegewisch Collection, and a fitting one at that. The most important Slovenian artist of the 20th century, he was born in the Gorizia region (then still part of the Austrian Empire) near the border to Italy, lived through both World Wars, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in Italy, and survived Dachau concentration camp, where he recorded his experiences in hundreds of drawings, many of which have survived. After the war, he eventually settled in Paris with his wife Ida Barbarigo. From the 1950-70 he mostly painted landscapes, often bordering on abstraction, but later in his long career returned to figuration. The present large painting is a haunting example of this last period:
'At the beginning of the 1990s in his later days, Music spent most days alone, drawing and painting. He painted himself: his body gradually disintegrating and his face disappearing, as the eroding landscape he had always pursued. He also painted his wife Ida. “I do not paint others, because I don’t know them,” he once said. The figures appear out of the empty space and seem unfinished. The colours of his self-portraits are those of the desert — harsh and sober — eliminating the superfluous and reduced to a minimum. Music said: “What interests me is bringing out the interior aspect. I see my portrait like any other landscape, a landscape that reflects what is inside me.” (Quoted from: www.axel-vervoordt.com/gallery/artists/zoran-music [accessed on 25 January 2025])