Reichenbach Vogtland

Creepy thing.
I looked it up; it’s [the “Jahrhundertschritt (Century Step) by Wolfgang Mattheur.](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Jahrhundertschritt) It’s from 1984.

Mattheuer writes about this figure:

“A naked leg, reaching far out. A booted leg, a black arm shooting out of a disembodied middle in a gesture of salvation and a fist on the raised second arm make a frenzied figure out of four extremities. […] What is this? Helpless raging? […] Chaos? Resurrection? Martial law? Loss of the center!”

In the 1980s, Mattheuer was to develop the parable that in retrospect was most significant for his entire oeuvre, his own mythological figure – the Jahrhundertschritt. In fact, the basic dialectical idea of this divisive figure is already present in Mattheuer’s earliest paintings. In the painting Aggression (1981), this ominous figure appears for the first time in a painterly work:

The body appears squat and deformed, the head is retracted behind the torn open ribcage and barely visible. It consists only of the extremities – an arm stretched out in a Hitler salute is counterbalanced by a leg tucked into a soldier’s boot and general’s trousers, the other, left arm is clenched into a communist fist, the right leg stomps forward, naked and reaching far out. This is followed by paintings entitled Alptraum (1982) and Verlorene Mitte (1982).