SchauLust
Alfons Walde


Alfons Walde is known best for his winter landscapes and farming images, especially skiing and sporting scenes, painted in tempera or impastoed oil paint. His enthusiasm for photography, on the other hand, is hardly known.


Supplemented by drawings and paintings, SchauLust contains a selection of ca. 120 previously completely unknown photographs from the 1920s to 1940s. The publication focuses on Walde’s view of the nude female body which he repeatedly varied in his studies. Classical poses alternate with playful and exuberant scenes. The intimate relationship between the painter and his muses is reflected in his photographs and transports the viewer back in time to the roaring twenties and thirties when sensuality and joie de vivre were celebrated.

The publication cover features a detail from one of his photographic works printed onto a linen woven from natural cotton with a pleasant feel. The title and back cover text are typeset onto a belly band of icy white gloss-coated paper. In this way, they become a playful element of hiding and revealing.

Year: 2014
Client: WestLicht Vienna; Haymon Verlag
Artist catalogue, 21 × 28 cm, 192 pages
In collaboration with Juliane Sonntag
Photography: Anjès Gesink