(Innsbruck 1932–2011 Vienna)
‘Etruria Blues-26–1982’, signed, dated Prachensky 82, as well as titeld, signed, dated Markus Prachensky 1982 on the reverse, acrylic on canvas, 175 x 130 cm, on stretcher, (K)

Provenance:
Austrian Collection

Etruria Blues
The way in which Prachensky’s mind was enriched by the increasing fusion between landscape and culture immediately and distinctively expressed itself in the series Etruria Blues (1982) through its great dynamism of form and colour. The basic concept adopted from Etruria meridionale seems to have evolved here into a vehicle of multiple meanings in all of its elements. The slightly curved roof shape, for instance, which is alluded to the forms of both triangle and rectangle can be related to the house urns Prachensky had seen in the museum at the Villa Giulia. However, this is certainly not the ‘depiction’ of a house urn. When observing the sweep that exclusively runs through the beam leading downwards from the upper left, one might easily think of numerous examples that can be found in the landscape. Yet above all, the artist has arrived here at a form whose balanced equilibrium is less centred than in Etruria meridionale; it is, in a way, an ‘enigmatic’ silence in which the upright bundle of beams has mostly been shifted to the right and in which the composition has only received its balanced and compact self-containedness through this sweep to the right. This is no longer a ‘house’, but a formula of culture and landscape.
Wolfgang Fleischer, Markus Prachensky, Löcker Verlag, Vienna, 1990