This horizontal painting portrays a man shown from the waist up, set against a background of architecture and a crowd of people. The artist employed a horizontal composition: a line approximately one-quarter from the bottom separates the ground from a street that stretches into the distance. The colour palette is light and pastel, dominated by whites, soft beiges, greens, and yellows. The light falls directly onto the man’s face, resulting in almost no shadows.

The man is positioned on the left side of the painting. His head is slightly tilted back, and his face is oval-shaped with a fair complexion. His hair is thick and dark—the darkest element in the image. His dark eyebrows are gently furrowed. His eyes are closed. His nose is broad with a slight bump. Beneath it, he wears a small moustache and has narrow, closed lips. He is dressed in a white shirt that is unbuttoned at the top, exposing part of his bare chest. The shirt is painted in a blend of green and white, distinguishing it from the light skin beneath. His arms hang loosely at his sides.

The background is rendered loosely. The architecture is composed of light patches of colour, with a few elements of building façades suggested by soft brushstrokes in darker paint. The crowd is depicted with small dabs of red and black, indicating significant distance between the man and the activity on the street.

Leopold Gottlieb deliberately rejected a traditional, formal portrait by depicting himself with tousled hair and an unbuttoned shirt, and above all by abandoning the vertical format. He gave his self-portrait a contemplative character: the horizontal composition enhances the sense of silence, as do the closed eyes and his distance from the crowd. These choices express a desire to withdraw from the world and focus on internal emotion.

Source: Text by Irena Buchenfeld on the painting Self-Portrait / Silence
Audiodescription: Emilia Szymańska
Consultation: Adrian Wyka
Expert Content Consultation: Irena Buchenfeld