Oil on canvas
With an adhesive label with artist's address and title on stretcher. 119,5 x 100 cm (47 x 39,3 in)
With two labels "Direction générale des Beaux-Arts [Brussels?]" and "CALC, XVe Salon 1938" on the stretcher.

PROVENANCE: Galleria Mutina, Modena.
Private collection Italy.

EXHIBITION: Joseph Albert, Galleria del Levante, Munich 1970, cat. no. 3 (with illus.).
Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre. 15. Europäische Kunstausstellung, Berlin 14 August - 16 October 1977, Teil 4: Neue Wirklichkeit, Surrealismus und Neue Sachlichkeit, cat. no. 4/4 (with illu.) (with adhesive label on stretcher).

This work by Joseph Albert, defined by a certain factual atmosphere, captures the observer by means of its cool distance. The graphic element is predominant. An atmosphere is evoked that gives the real depiction a surrealist touch, due to the restrained coloring. The rear-view figure, which shields the composition from the observer, barely leaves room for narrative details. Things seem to pause in their place, as if they were meant to be there for ever. The interplay of inside and outside through the wide bank of windows, is integrated into this rigid scheme. The city landscape outside of the windows is a world of its own, not corresponding with what is happening inside. A small bourgeois world is depicted by Joseph Albert, its secrets reveal only hesitantly. [KD].