Amazing the strength, the energy, the élan vital, the dynamics that radiate from Emil Schumacher’s new paintings. Amazing how much hurt, suffering, experience, as well as resoluteness and intensity, throb beneath the colorful layers, beneath the crustlike surfaces and the black lines that dig like streams of lava into the earthy pigments.

Schumacher’s paintings are done with nervous, hectic gestures and seeming impatience. Their brittle surfaces evince traces of strokes, slashes, and wounds inflicted by the painter himself. They recall denuded landscapes—a countryside with parched soil full of