A visionary artist: K.W. Diefenbach
Some rooms of the Certosa house since 1974 the collection of paintings by the German painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (Hadamar 1851-Capri 1913). Reformist, pacifist, free thinker, symbolist, sun worshiper, Diefenbach was much criticized for his natural way of life: he was, in fact, a follower of theosophical doctrine and practiced vegetarianism and nudism. Arrived in Capri in December 1899, he decided to live on the island until his death in 1913: “Capri will be enough for a lifetime with these rugged cliffs that I adore, with this tremendous and beautiful sea…”. His paintings, mixed technique, are made with polychrome mixtures mixed with sand, gravel, grass and bitumen, in order to give corposity to the images, experimenting a new type of painting, based on the exaltation of the matter that is opaque, dry, dense. His paintings, of exceptional expressive power, convey a sense of mystery and confusion. In some cases the monumental dimensions, like real theatrical scenographies, are the basis of Diefenbach’s message that, in this way, emphasizes the feeling of impotence of the observer in front of the immensity of nature. The Capri landscape reduced to the essential elements (sea – sky – rock) became the predominant theme of this last painting season. The vision of Capri, distorted and exalted by the artist’s imagination, was no longer that of a sweet Mediterranean island, but became that of a Nordic landscape: a panorama often dark and gloomy, Illuminated by sudden surreal flashes that expressed the Romanticism of Diefenbach and represented a nature “eternal, majestic, immobile, inclemently, which the individual can only be part”. © MINISTERO DELLA CULTURA

CONTINUE: You must not kill