Leo Putz explored eroticism through his oil paintings of naked women, producing works that balance art nouveau elegance with an impressionist sensibility. Rather than shocking revelation, his erotic paintings tend toward a cultivated sensuality, with languid poses, softly modelled flesh, and a focus on atmosphere – sunlit skin, reflective water, and the enclosing landscape – which makes sexuality part of a larger, pictorial harmony. 

Putz’s use of oils as a medium allowed him to build luminous surfaces and subtle tonal transitions. His brushwork varies from smooth modelling in close-up studies of the body to more broken, plein-air scenes of larger groupings, where the erotic element is embedded within scenes of social leisure – women bathing, reclining, or conversing at the water’s edge. This framing renders the erotic as both private and publicly visible – an interplay many of his contemporaries found compelling. 

Putz’s paintings often mix innocence and suggestion, with youthful figures set in idyllic nature, classical references flattened into modern dress, and an economy of explicit detail that relies on posture and gaze to convey desire.