Published by Forum Gallery, 2002. English text by Robert Fishko; 32 pages, 27.9 × 21.5 cm (11 × 8.5 inches), Smyth-sewn softcover, offset. Design by Impress Inc.

“Most often, landscape paintings are about the intersection of place and time. By this association, they trigger memory and create emotional response. On first viewing, the ravishing paintings Peter Krausz has collectively entitled The Song of the Earth are beautiful examples of this convention in landscape painting. In fact, his paintings are imaginary of place and indefinite in time. Conventionally, such paintings are called ‘idealized’, but here this label would be misleading because Peter Krausz's approach eschews the ideal and probes his subjects for the essential reality that lies beneath the visible surface of the landscapes he creates.

Inspired by Gustav Mahler's monumental work for two singers and orchestra, and using his remarkable personal background, acute power of observation and consummate technical mastery, Peter Krausz has given us a group of paintings that are an homage to eternity, to the constancy of nature and the struggle between human progress and history. The palpable gravity of the works is at once clear and mysterious as we are humbled by the majesty of the subjects and transported to the places of our memories. Krausz has not merely stitched together valleys and meadows to make pictures; he has created tonal poems that speak of the generations of life that have passed through the places they describe. As Mahler, devastated by the death of his daughter, aged four, and facing his own terminal illness, found refuge in the renewal of nature while acknowledging the limits of human life, Krausz celebrates the collective human history that his unpopulated landscapes represent.”

> Robert Fishko, Director, Forum Gallery, New York