The work of Georg Glaser is complex, and is not easily understood at a glance.

The language of forms and colours
First comes the language of forms and colours: on a sumptuously coloured background, adorned with various iconographic motifs, or with vague architectural silhouettes, some characters appear, sketched with simple colour strokes, without any depth, thus allowing the background colours to appear.
Other characters, in strokes of different colours or in shadowgraph, animate a middle ground.
There is no hint of geometric perspective, and still we detect a depth in the composition, through the relationships between colours, through the shades, through the dimensions of forms.
The drawing is brisk, angular, extremely schematic but always effective. It often reminds us of the German expressionists of 'Die Brücke'. Sometimes his silhouettes make us irresistibly think of some German neo-expressionists, and on other occasions we are reminded of the Fauvists or of Picasso. Actually, Georg Glaser will not be locked up in a style or a manner, however excellent and notorious.

A personal iconography
The iconographical motifs of Georg Glaser are numerous, taken in part from Prehistoric Art or Prime Arts, which he had the opportunity to study in depth whilst taking a degree in ethnology and archaeology, or taken from his varous trips to the Mediterranean basin or to Latin America. We often see trees, ladders (the climbing of which should lead to social recognition... but rungs are often broken), wheels that should liberate man from physical effort, spirals, animals with a symbolic value (such as a turtle, a dove, a snake...), etc.


Themes in the work of Georg Glaser
All these pictorial means are used to offer us reflection themes about our relationship to the world and to Nature, to other men and to woman, to our history and our culture:

- Modern life: 'Hip Hop Generation' and 'Confetti' show characters that seem to have fun. Everything is all right. But what about the white figures in the middle ground of 'Confetti'? Aren't they telling us that behind a facade of rejoicing, some difficult realities are waiting for us?

- Our relation to Nature: 'Biker' is a first example: the swarming of cars on highways is opposed to a bike, the more humane conviviality of which is illustrated by the woman-shaped frame (but wouldn't some people see a sign of machismo here?). With 'Erika' we are getting straight into the drama of ecological catastrophes: oil spots spilling from the tanker are staining the sea, a woman is crying over Nature's lost purity, while a fisherman is still catching fish.
In 'Ce n'est pas si grave que çà!' (Don't worry, it is not that serious) we can see a child and a woman, whom we guess to be his mother, staring at a cow, against a background of factories and chimney stacks. Nothing unusual in this, except that the cow has mutated and is now endowed with a leopard coat. But let us not worry, it is not that serious, is it?

-Violence and war: a cold background, against which blue trees and an entanglement of black silhouettes are standing out. We notice a spear here and a shield there, men are preparing for war, while panicking doves are flying in all directions. The woman already foresees the upcoming calamities. But when will Man ever understand, 'Wann wird Mann je verstehn?'. The same theme is dealt with in the same cold colours in 'Taubenjagd' (Dove Hunt). War drama is also soberly evoked in 'Allein unter Helden' (Alone among Heroes): a woman finds herself alone between a warrior and a cemetery with a quite military layout. We can see something like a counterpoint to the main theme in a tree, a snake and a tortoise (symbol of longevity: war stupidity is eternal, and moreover the woman seems to be pregnant. Generation renewal, and herewith perpetuation of human drama, is warranted).
- Women: obviously women are present everywhere in Georg Glaser's work. They are also the main subject of numerous paintings. They are odalisques, immediately reminding us of Matisse, like in 'Immer schön am Teppich bleiben' (Always remain gently on the carpet), they are also the long series of 'Small European Nude', of which nr 38 and 43 are reproduced on this site.


Finally, Georg Glaser also draws on themes from mythology for his paintings ('Ariane'), from literature, with quotations from Brecht or Grimm ('Eisenhans'), from folklore ('Heidewitzka, Herr Kapitän', an old folksong from the Rhine region), etc.


But 'Que la fête continue' (Let the party go on): mankind will keep bustling as always, and the snake is ready to bite its own tail, like Ouroboros, the King-Serpent symbol of creation and of universal life.