Scharl is a painter of people whose special painterly quality becomes particularly obvious in his strong character portraits, which show simple workers and soldiers in a physicality battered by life or death and with unembellished immediacy. On the other hand, however, his painterly mastery also becomes evident in his wonderful multi-figure society paintings of the Golden Twenties. These evening parties, which often show wealthy men in tails, act like a glamorous, almost decadent antithesis to the battered physiognomies that confront us in his worker paintings. In the typical style of the 1920s, Scharl has rendered the two male characters from the Weimar Republic on the canvas in "Zwei Herren im Frack" (Two Gentlemen in Tails) with a typical brushstroke inspired by Van Gogh. Scharl's dissecting society pictures of these years, such as the present painting or ""Blinder Bettler im Café" (Blind Beggar in the Café, 1927, Kunsthalle Emden), "Drei Korporierte (Larven) (Three Corporates (Grubs), 1925, Lenbachhaus Munich) are among the best that Scharl's painterly work has to offer. Scharl's clearly dynamic style of these years is unique, combining elements of Expressionism and New Objectivity. And so it is not surprising that the painting "Konferenz/Die Gruppe" (Conference/The Group, 1927) with four gentlemen in tails, and the work "Der Abend” (The Evening, 1925) are currently listed as the artist's two most expensive works on the international auction market. In the 1920s, Scharl was at the peak of his creativity, he joined the artists' association "Neue Münchner Sezession" and the "Juryfreie" and successfully took part in their exhibitions. With the beginning of the National Socialist’s cultural policy, he witnesses drastic changes in the 1930s: sales and exhibition participation decreased, Scharl's financial situation worsened and he was banned from painting. Nevertheless, in 1935, Karl Nierendorf helped him to a solo exhibition. An invitation to take part in an international exhibition together with Beckmann, Scholz, Heckel and Hofer, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, encouraged Scharl to emigrate to America in 1939. [JS]