Alfons Walde is the best ambassador for his homeland Tyrol, with its overwhelmingly beautiful mountain landscape around the legendary hiking and skiing resort of Kitzbühel. His pictures make a significant contribution to Tyrol's image as a model mountain landscape. The picturesquely captured dream of the impressive winter mountain world with the wide view over the snow-covered peaks and the crystal-clear, lucid blue sky allows the observer to linger and breathe the crisp mountain air. Alfons Walde was born near Kitzbühel where he also grew up. From 1910 to 1914 he attended the Technical University in Vienna and became an architect. He started painting at an early age, so it is little surprising that he also met Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt in Vienna. His life's work does not only consist of his oeuvre of paintings, as his work as an architect also had significant impact, especially on Kitzbühel. His ideas are behind the construction of the Hahnenkamm mountain railway and the affiliated mountain house built in 1929. He had significant influence on the townscape as building officer of the city of Kitzbühel.

This original training as an architect allowed Walde to find a painting style that emphasized the architectural element in the compositions through the design of compact forms and clear outlines combined with the formal structure of the image area. He mastered the challenge of capturing and accentuating the spatial dimension of the mountains and to illustrate the presence of urban architecture in this environment. Walde achieved this with just a few colors and color values, which he gave a vibrant intensity with his coarse brushwork. A striking feature of Walde's painting is the impasto, dry manner which enables him to continually create new, lively nuances of light. Above all, the sometimes harshly juxtaposed light and shadow values are what make the artist's visual language so special. [EH]