Actaeon

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: private collection.

In the classical myth told by Ovidius, metamorphoses that young prince Actaeon experienced encountering chaste goddess Diana and her nymphs are described. Punishing Actaeon, the goddess turns him into a deer persecuted and then killed by dogs. In the interpretation of Kurt Seligmann, the poor hunter raises his horns; the animated landscape forms, as if growing and twisting around the prince, are going to absorb him. His body resembles a skeleton (the influence of the sculptures of Giacometti, the fellow practitioner of Kurt from the Geneve Academy), and his clothes are torn. The sad end is obvious.