Waskes Iphigenie

1981
Acrylic on wood
170 x 170 cm
private collection

Iphigenie after Anselm Feuerbach (c. 1862), Hessischen Landesmuseum Darmstadt
“The parody of Feuerbach’s 1862 painting recites a ‘classic of the Occident’ … Iphigenia, Nanna, Feuerbach’s beloved model, sits on an Italian beach, her gaze lost in the distance. But what appears to be idyllic beach romance on a cursory glance turns out to be Italian reality on closer inspection: concrete hotel buildings, masses of human bodies on the beach, interspersed with figures in radiation suits searching for contaminated victims with ambulances, a visionary nightmare image painted many years before Chernobyl. The vacation smile freezes into a pithy grimace in the southern summer sun.”
(Alexander Rauch, in: exhibition catalogue “Mathias Waske – Mona Lisa bis Madonna”, KunstHausWien, 2005, p. 20)