Lady in Blue

Lady in Blue depicts a motif typical of the Pallas school of painting: a woman seated in an idyllic park, possibly in an outdoor cafe. The motif itself is not the most significant element, however, and Rüga has rendered it rather abstract in order to focus more on the colours. Forms diffuse and contours blend into the surrounding fields of colour. Rüga has chosen mainly colder hues here, but the mood is, nevertheless, optimistic and life-affirming, which seems to have been his creative creed. “In my art I am like the great temple of nature: I am free, aimless, and a servant of beauty,” Rüga wrote. “Should my heart beat only to carry a chalice of evil for destroying the joy of fellow human beings? Should my spirit create to enslave a human being and demean his or her taste? That is why my oeuvre gives the viewer the right to be free in their enjoyment, to cry out in a biblical manner: “a potato is not the colour of a potato”.”