HENRY KOERNER, June Night

Josh Logan, New York
Private Collection, New York
Gift to the present owner from the above, 1971

Professor Joseph Koerner, the artist's son writes: "The work June Night dates from 1947-48.  Produced in Brooklyn, New York, where my father lived from his return from the War in 1947 through about 1952, it is an important example of my father's early, most popular phase...The window at the lower right of June Night is a conscious allusion to that open window, with its lace curtain; my father wrote a slightly fictional auto-biographical short story about his return to Vienna, and there the view through the open window includes the torn lace curtain.  My father's mother, my grandmother, wove lace as a hobby, and thus the curtain alludes to her and her handy work.  The chestnut trees at the side, and in the home; its carnival atmosphere and vernacular artifacts (handmade carousels, etc.) remained a reservoir of motifs, a sort of primal surrealism for my father; the use here of graphic arts (the bride and groom poster, again, and the Pegasus) attains a mythic dimension for my father through its relation to the childhood memories of that nearby amusement park, itself a labyrinth of cheap art, eroticism, and terror."