Artist of the month – David Schnell

Burst into summer with an explosion of fantastic colour from a unique visionary German painter

I first encountered David Schnell’s work during my uni days, whilst totally obsessed with colour, shapes and the landscape. The boldness of colour, use of line and how he frames his compositions really drew me in. Similar to Renaissance landscape paintings your eye is drawn to the horizon line; this vanishing point. Part of the New Leipzig School (Neue Leipziger Schule), a modern German movement of painters, Schnell masters a combination of the figurative and abstract, with a focus on graphic techniques.

From the offset you can’t help but be sucked into his graphical vortex and amalgamation of luminous colours and these horizontal shards, that appear quite harmonious within it’s natural surroundings. This can be seen in the painting below. These structures are sometimes imposing the landscape but never threatening; an indistinct alien and urban culture that remains organic in the space. His bold, animated use of colour and the explosive impact of these wooden structures reflects the energy and sense of movement in this imaginative landscape Schnell has created.

The landscape painting of David Schnell reflects the manifestations of a nature, which is getting undercut by our direct, urban surrounding. Thereby architectural pieces capture more or less dominantly the image area of the landscapes. David Schnell uses places such as the cultivated landscape around Leipzig, his domicile and place of study as master student of Prof. Arno Rink, as sources of motive for his pictures.

Painting by David Schnell (Detail) / Galerie EIGEN+ART / The Arm

david-schnell-glockenspiel-1362393076_org

Within his contemplations of landscape the artist does not evoke real moments of memory. He rather shows an abstract nature which lies beyond any recognizable or concrete experiences. This abstraction manifests itself in the pictorial dissolving of architectural structures and wavering, partly competing vanishing points. Alienating, dissolving, decomposing and subsequent connecting are signs of the artists processual way of working. There are also visual contents which are formed just out of pixels and barcodes. The fluttery status is additionally pointed out by the colouring of the pictures, which ranges from monochrome displays up to prism like light refractions.