Scherzo
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.Friedrich painted this scene as part of a series of five canvases in which nude figures evoke different passages of music. Exhibited in its own room at the Vienna Secession in 1913, the cycle sparked appreciation from an unexpected quarter. The bodies’ "inner rhythmicality" and "harmony of line and color" were praised by the political revolutionary and exile Leon Trotsky in an art review for a radical newspaper in Kyiv (Kiev). Little-known today, Friedrich was a founder, along with Gustav Klimt, of the Secession, a pioneering artists’ society that advocated for independent creative expression and for dialogue among painting, sculpture, and design.
Artwork Details
- Title: Scherzo
- Artist: Otto Friedrich (Austrian, Raab 1862–1937 Vienna)
- Date: 1913
- Medium: Tempera on canvas
- Dimensions: 39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in. (100 × 100 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: The Hearn Family Trust
- Object Number: L.2014.46.2
- Curatorial Department: European Paintings