Bergfriedhof

The motif of the mountain cemetery is characterized by the opposition between its means of representation and pictorial content. The New Objectivist painter Xaver Fuhr compresses reality in the contrast between the painterly areas of color of the mountains and the graphic lines of their silhouettes and wrought iron grave decorations.

Extending from the right edge of the painting, a morbid color mood envelops the scene, dividing the picture into light and dark. The row of graves reverses the sequence of light-dark contrast, so that white graves appear before a dark background and vice versa. The contrasts in the lighting are continued at the level of the painting’s meaning.

In contrast to the symbols of death in the foreground—the grave crosses and skulls—the mountain range in the distance awakens associations with the idea of lasting eternity. The cemetery wall becomes a symbolic dividing line between transience and eternity, and thus marks the existential moment of transition that is death. Fuhr employs religious symbols and pictorial similes in order to invest his image of the mountain cemetery with a meaning that goes beyond what is actually visible.