Sunset, 1954

Natural landscapes form a central motif in Evard’s work. He not only paints various natural objects but also pays close attention to specific lighting conditions and is guided by moods in nature as well as particular light situations. This is also evident in the present painting.
The present expressionist work depicts a lake landscape in the foreground with a mountain range in the middle ground and a sky landscape in the background.

The supposed plants located at the bottom edge of the painting make the shore of the lake and the lake itself recognizable. Furthermore, the mountain range encloses the lake. If one were to imagine the painting without the shore plants and without the mountain range, the body of water would probably not be recognizable as such.
The lake is calm; no wave movements are discernible. The sky itself is also calmly depicted; only clouds are visible. This also contributes to the calm atmosphere of the landscape that the painting conveys to the viewer. Due to the tranquility of the lake and the sky, the viewer can focus on the diverse color variation and the intense expression of the colors.

The powerfully colored sky acts as a counterpart to the equally colorful body of water. While the lake is rendered in cold blue and green tones, the sky captivates with very warm red and yellow tones. Evard thus not only addresses sky and earth or water per se as an antithetical pair but also reinforces this contrast through his choice of colors. The black mountain range serves as a separation between the contrasting middle ground and background. The artist thereby creates a subtle depth perspective, which, with the same color family, would likely have produced a two-dimensional effect. The cold tones in the foreground occupy more pictorial space compared to the warm tones. This leads to the calm atmosphere created by the colder tones maintaining dominance over the more exciting mood generated by the warm tones, thus dominating the overall mood of the painting. Thanks to the warm tones, an emotional closeness is created between the viewer and the painting. As attention-grabbing colors, they direct the viewer’s focus to what they symbolize here: the sunset.

The clouds in the sky and the mountains are rendered in black. This choice of color also contributes to the calming evening atmosphere. Furthermore, the approaching night is foreshadowed by this.
Furthermore, we can observe that the clouds are reflected in the lake, and consequently, we find their blackness mirrored. This reflection of the clouds can be interpreted as a connection between the otherwise seemingly separate lake and sky landscapes. It overcomes the apparent separation and symbolizes the unity of the two supposedly separate landscapes, which are interdependent.
The sun, as the central object of a sunset and the source of the various colors, is not visible. Only its rays can be discerned.

Horizontal lines dominate the entire painting. Exceptions are the depictions of mountains and plants. They are mostly represented by diagonal, and rarely by vertical, lines. The immediate foreground is not only delineated from its background by vertical lines but also by the impasto, almost relief-like application of paint.
The brushwork here is rather planar than expressive.

As a Swiss, André Evard lived almost his entire life in the Swiss High Jura. In addition to the mountains in the immediate vicinity, not far from his hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds are Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Biel. Repeatedly, he was inspired by the landscape that shaped him as a young man, leading to various landscape paintings that still fascinate us today.