“I want to be completely quiet and let the things speak for themselves.”

Rudolf Wacker was an Austrian painter and one of the leading representatives of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) in Austria, an artistic movement that returned to realistic and highly detailed painting, but often gave everyday subjects a mysterious or psychologically charged quality. He studied in Vienna and Weimar, but his artistic development was interrupted by the First World War. In 1915, he was captured by Russian forces in Poland and spent almost five years as a prisoner of war in Siberia. His experiences of the war would shape him for the rest of his life, as well as his painting.

His art is often described as magical realism, in which the depicted subjects take on something enigmatic and mysterious. His memories of the war led him to seek solace in nature and in the small, seemingly insignificant things around him, something that is particularly evident in his still lifes.

In 1938, he was subjected to a Gestapo search of his home and interrogation, and around the same period he suffered two heart attacks. He died the following year, just 46 years old.