Berlin, Alexanderplatz

Berlin, Alexanderplatz of 1910, executed in pastel, captures one of the German capital's most iconic public spaces during a period of rapid urban transformation. Alexanderplatz, in the eastern center of Berlin, was a major transit hub — trams, horse-drawn vehicles, and increasingly automobiles intersected there amid department stores and commercial buildings. Ury's choice of pastel for this urban subject is significant: the medium's powdery, light-scattering quality was well suited to capturing the atmospheric conditions of a busy city square. He had worked in pastel alongside oil throughout his career, finding it responsive to the quick notations and atmospheric effects that his urban subjects required. By 1910 Ury was at the height of his reputation as Berlin's premier painter of modern city life. The Alexanderplatz he depicted was about to be transformed even further by modernist urban planning, making his images documents of a transitional Berlin.

Pastel allows Ury to build atmospheric effects rapidly through layering and blending. The medium's inherent luminosity suits a busy, light-filled urban square. Figures and vehicles are rendered as gestural notations, their outlines softened.