Black is a color

For centuries past, artists have paid attention to death and mortality, as well as to suffering and the causes of mortality through jurisdiction and torture, war and cruelty. Klaus Verscheure?s work might appear to be unrelated to the above, yet there is a clear link. The trees that he paints are not simply the subject, due to their pictorial and picturesque meaning. The mountainous landscapes are not there for the landscape and the dwellings nor for their architectural pretensions; he paints them because of what is no longer there. Absence plays a major role. People once hung from the trees, usually after a lynching. The mountains are situated in the Bavarian Alps and experts will recognise the Obersalzberg. The Berghof, Hitler?s holiday home built on the foundations of Haus Wachenfeld, an idyllically situated chalet, was located in the Obersalzberg. The houses, whether they be spacious villas or modernistic or romantic-looking cottages, were each the scene of a crime.00The paintings that Klaus Verscheure creates always raise the same question: ?Why does the artist show this (empty) image, what?s happening here?? A question without any answer, because nothing is actually happening at the depicted moment.