Gustav Gurschner and Loetz "Die Verlassene" Table Lamp

This table lamp by Gustav Gurschner and Loetz, titled Die Verlassene (“The Forsaken”), transforms a functional object into a poetic meditation on abandonment. The composition is structured vertically, as an intertwined nude couple climbs upward along a trailing length of drapery that visually connects the base to the shade. At the summit, the woman cradles the glass globe—the lamp’s light source. The amber Loetz glass shade, flecked with pale orange spotting and threaded with delicate applied streamers, enhances this atmospheric effect. 

The bronze base itself is formed by the eponymous forsaken woman, whose figure anchors the composition even as it participates in this upward movement. This tension—between grounding and ascent—is central to the lamp’s meaning. The design likely draws on imagery from Gustav Klimt, particularly Fish Blood (1897) and Medicine (1901). In Fish Blood, nude figures are borne along a current-like flow, their bodies integrated into a larger, impersonal movement of nature. In Medicine, a vertical cascade of nude bodies rises toward an ambiguous, looming figure, evoking the inexorable flow of life and the inevitability of death. 

Similarly, in this lamp, the ascent of the figures—culminating in the glowing globe—suggests not only physical elevation but a metaphysical journey into the unknown. As a table lamp, it enacts this symbolism through light itself: illumination becomes a metaphor for transcendence, even as the weighted bronze base reminds the viewer of human limitation. In this way, the lamp reflects the Viennese Secession subject matter, the “river of life,” a worldview in which individuals are carried by forces they cannot fully master. This sensibility resonates with the philosophical currents of early existential thought, where human striving is defined by its confrontation with indeterminacy. The figures’ ascent implies aspiration toward release or meaning, yet their dependence on the fragile, glowing globe underscores the precariousness of that desire. The grounded figure at the base continually reasserts embodiment and burden, recalling tensions later articulated by thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche regarding the individual’s struggle with selfhood.

The title Die Verlassene references a Lied by Antonín Dvořák, composed in 1876 and based on a Moravian folk narrative of a young rural woman abandoned by her lover. More broadly, Lieder belong to an eighteenth-century German art song tradition in which Romantic poetry—particularly by figures such as Heine, Goethe, and Eichendorff—was set to music. The form was revived in the nineteenth century by Romantic and later composers, including Bohemian and French Impressionist circles. Artists associated with the Vienna Secession frequently engaged with this musical-literary tradition, often drawing on or echoing the expressive worlds of composers ranging from Beethoven to Mahler in their own explorations of psychology.