The Painter of Bright Nights
Kraushaar Galleries

Maine has brightened many an artist's day, but for at least one painter, it also lighted up the nights. The German-born landscapist Karl Schrag (1912-95) summered on Deer Isle for more than 40 years and viewed night there as a prime subject, "a kind of fantastic day when everything becomes possible." Intense fauve colors, energetic forms and dreamy atmosphere are the "possibles" in this lyrical show, devoted to his nighttime paintings and prints. They are full of movement and fresh air.
In "White Moon Over Moonlit Trees," trees of various hues are touched with silvery splendor; in "Apple Tree at Night," an old but spry tree that almost dances near the edge of a pond has a lilac pink hue that intensifies the pink of its lush blossom sprays. "Nighttime II" depicts the artist seated in pajamas on the edge of his bed in a kind of bewitched state, a dark window enlivened by bright curtains and a bough outside of it in full green leaf.
Schrag was well versed as a printmaker, too. He had studied at the avant-garde Atelier 17, the workshop set up in Manhattan during the war years by the British painter and graphic artist Stanley William Hayter, and took over as director for a while when Hayter returned to Europe in 1950. The prints on view here share the lyricism of the paintings.
Particularly vibrant is "Of Island Nights, Sickle Moon and Birches," a poetic reverie in black and white of curving birches, a white pond and, yes, a sickle moon. It all has the potential for schmaltz, but Schrag rises above it.

GRACE GLUECK New York Times. September 2005