Krön by Anna Klasz (engl., 2009)
Since I let myself be persuaded – for payment – to write something about the work for my father, I shall try to summarize what I have understood during the recent past. Please consider my situation as a girl of fourteen who does not always understand what her father spend so much time painting yellow buildings, warehouses and old toothless peasants since it is known that art is anything named “Art”, one cannot question this. Oh yes, my beloved father has just mentioned that he will have this text translated into English by Aunt Mea, if it is good enough. When I asked him: “What for, please?” he answered: “For the World! For England and New York”. Therefore: Hallo World! Ta-ta. Admire Streitdorf, its original old peasants and its pylons.
My father is standing on the green lawn of the soccer field in Bruderndorf, without his glasses, therefore blind. Next to him some muskrats from the near brook romp about. All around are fields in the afternoon sun, on the horizon one can see Niederfellabrunn and its green-pink grade school and, nearby, some sheep behind a fence. In front of father a canvas from which he steps back now and then to study his work. What is he painting there?
Not many people pass by. Actually only when they ride their bicycles towards Bruderndorf, or when they come with a child to feed the horses. But, since hereabouts one doesn’t very often see somebody with an easel standing on the grass, they may be curious and came closer. “Naw! What’s that? Not the goal? D’ya really wanna paint the goal? But why the goal?” Yes, why the goal? That riddle may never be solved. I think painting soccer goals was the start of a long series of portrayals of our “new” home and its surroundings here in Streitdorf. During our four years here a considerable collection has accumulated; various views of our lane with the Sennig brook and its bridges, the barns of the local farmers in front of blooming rape fields, pylons in the vicinity looking almost extraterrestrial in the strangely dazzling light of the sunset of the Weinviertel.
Some of my father’s landscapes are also really beautiful. Above all, the picture with the appropriate title “Moon Night”. I honestly mean this, even if I do not know where to find the moon in that night. The picture roughly shows that takes place in the summer (at night, of course) in front of our house. There is the car parked in front of my parents’ sacred vegetable garden (by the way – the Zeisel vegetable garden is right next to it). There are two stairs in the sky, the yellow light of the street lamp (which, unfortunately, is not shown in the picture), a few leaves of Mummy’s mallows in front of our nice garden fence. Altogether, it depicts this wonderful romantic mood which overcomes you in the country when you sit all by yourself on front of your house and enjoy the warm night air. Though what you cannot see is the crazy loud croaking of the frogs sounding from the castle’s pond. No idea how they can ever sleep in the castle.
I also like the picture “Wind Turbines near Leitzersdorf”. Some people think wind turbines are ugly. I do not agree. Someway they convey the impression of infinity. Thin, delicate grass stalks, fields, the sun coming through the clouds. And then, far away, the wind turbines. Witnesses of ecofriendly energy. How they go on turning and turning. How they stand erect next to each other in a long row and thus point your glance towards a blue hill which, maybe, could be Michelberg. Perhaps this picture also shows stormy atmosphere. In any case, it looks turbulent. With its flapping grass stalks and its rotating wind turbines and its clouds torn by the wind. Or should it just show the street to Niederfellabrunn in a new light? Who knows!
The poetic titles of these works should also be mentioned. “Pepsch’s Hall”, “Pond near Bruderndorf”, “Pigsty near Streitdorf”, or even “Gas Station Streitdorf”. What I want to say: What does “pigsty”, “gas station” and “Streitdorf” make you think of? Presumably of a sad little village and something not so charming, as a gas station and a sty with pigs and pig shit sludge. We want to thank Mr. Krön for teaching us otherwise and showing all these terms as peaceful and dreamy as never shown before. And we want to thank the farmers for building pig pens and silos – because, what would we do without them.
I think my father has always had a passion for the modern Austrian country and its occupants. We didn’t move here for no reasons. My father has definitely developed a quite new type of landscape painting. I don’t know whether anyone can really interpret it. I, at any rate, cannot.
