Early Vienna - The Clowns

For the first ten years following Georg's return from Russia and the alpine TB sanitorium, he painted exclusively clowns or sad men in a German empressionistic style. His friends would remark,"That´s you isn´t it?"He strongly denied this, answering, "No, that´s just some guy I saw in the café or a restaurant." After 10 years, he finally recognized that these men did represent himself, and were an unconscious catharsis, a way of cleansing his spirit of all that he had experienced and endured during the war. These harlequins would continue to appear throughout his remaining career, at times of strong emotions or uncertainty.