The Road to Gelmeroda

Gelmeroda, a village near Weimar, has attracted painters since the nineteenth century, up to and including Lyonel Feininger. Rohlfs does not depict the village with its pointed spire, but shows instead the broad sweep of the road, flooded with wintry light as it snakes into the distance between meadows, gardens, and trees. The two incidental peasant figures seen from behind create a sense of depth that underlines the wide open spaces of the district. The paint is applied thickly in this work which is typical of Rohlfs’ early manner. Later on his landscapes became much more Impressionist, and after experiments with abstraction he became one of the most important individualists among the Expressionists. In the end his work was classed as “degenerate” — a turn of events that is scarcely believable in the light of his work before 1900.