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Today we focus on a single work in the collection: a large-scale oil painting by the Munich-based painter Max Radler (German, 1904–1971). One is struck by the clear formal order of the composition. It is divided at the horizon line into upper and lower zones, and sliced through at center by the diagonal wedge of the bridge’s receding surface. The upper zone is mostly sky, its infinity measured by intermittent street lamps. It is still and barren. Two tiny figures—one at the railing, the other in the building—flank its expanse. The lower zone, beneath the bridge, is where the action takes place: a speeding train hurtles to its destination. A whoosh of smoke is described by the only free-hand brushstroke in the otherwise tightly-painted composition (see detail below). It is an arabesque of thin, dry, white paint; a transparent, atmospheric anomaly within the dense, solid, angular surroundings. Stillness and silence dominate the upper zone, whereas a short-lived roar blasts from below. As in the best of so-called Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) painting, this work describes palpable tension between the wonder of mechanization and its bleak, alienating effects. Radler is perhaps best-known today for his Der Radiohörer (The Radio Listener) of 1930 in Munich’s Lenbachhaus. Very few of his paintings of the 1930s survived the bombings of Munich during the Second World War.
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