Twin Heads
Alfred Henry Maurer
ALFRED HENRY MAURER, c.1930. OIL ON CANVAS.
Fusing the composition of Cubist art with the potently affecting feeling of Expressionism, Maurer’s dual heads occupied him for much of his career but it was only in his maturity that they realised their greatest forms. This one, painted just two years before he died from suicide at 64, is haunting. The two female figures become one, though their fusion seems almost unwilling, their eyes filled with trepidation. This uneasy duality was something the artist felt both personally, and in his artistic practice. Maurer began his career painting landscapes in a far more naturalist style, but began to look internally and found within himself a more abstract feeling. “It is impossible to present an exact transcription of nature”, he said, “It is necessary for art to differ from nature. Perhaps art should be an intensification of nature; at least it should express an inherent feeling which cannot be obtained from nature except through a process of association… The artist must be free to paint his effects. Nature must not bind him.”