Alois Kuperion

Alois Kuperion in Merano

"Kuperion - Painting is my purpose in life" Exhibition at Merano Art
4th October 2015 - 10th January 2016

Alois Kuperion (born July 20, 1891 in Tarsch ; † January 17, 1966 in Meran ) was a South Tyrolean painter .

biography

Alois Kuperion was born in 1891 in the small fraction of Tarsch in the municipality of Latsch in Vinschgau . He was the only child of the small farmer Josef Kuperion and his wife Anna Platzer. He attended elementary school first in Kuens , where a brother of his father was pastor, and then in Tarsch and Martell . Then he attended a course in the agricultural state college in Rotholz . There he learned a little botany, physics, geometry and surveying and often had to draw in the various subjects. He liked this activity so much that on his return home and after seeing a friend's watercolors, he began to paint. At first he only showed the pictures to family members until they advised him to exhibit and sell them.

In 1913 the father married for the second time and therefore Alois left the home farm. He hired himself as an agricultural worker in Switzerland and stayed there until the beginning of the First World War . From 1915 to 1918 he served in the second Tyrolean Kaiserjäger regiment, sometimes also at the front.

Painting remained his great passion. He walked as far as Florence and Rome to see the great works of the classics.

During the Second World War, Kuperion moved to Austria. From 1941 to 1943 he worked as a laborer in an aircraft factory in Wiener Neustadt . In 1945 he returned to the Vinschgau. He found accommodation with a farmer in Galsaun (municipality of Kastelbell-Tschars ), where he helped a little with field work and otherwise devoted himself to painting. From Galsaun he usually went on foot to Meran and Bozen and was known in the valley as “Lottrmolr” (beggar painter) because he always tried to sell his pictures or to trade them in.

In 1954 he came partly by train and partly on foot to Venice, where he stayed for a long time at the Biennale and studied the works exhibited there.

From 1957 Kuperion lived in Meran, where art lovers supported him a little and he also managed to sell pictures to tourists. However, while he had wandered the country a lot during his time in Vinschgau, he stayed mainly in inns in Merano and became more and more a drinker. He did not succeed in obtaining reasonable prices for his pictures, so that he could no longer pay for accommodation in the Gasthaus zum Goldenen Löwen and his debts increased. In 1961, the year of his first exhibition, the debts were so great that they wanted to put him out of the door. In a specially held meeting, the municipality decided to assign him a place in the old people's home. He died there on January 17th, 1966. A street in Merano was named after him.

Exhibitions

The first exhibition opened on June 3, 1961 in the Kursaal in Merano . The exhibition was then shown in Lugano , Florence and Rome.

In October 2015 the cultural office of the municipality of Merano organized an exhibition about Alois Kuperion together with the Kunstverein Kunst Merano . A catalog was published on the occasion of the exhibition.

bibliography

• Boschesi Palmiro: Alois Kuperion , monograph published by Pötzelberger, Meran 1962
• Kristanell, Roland / Preims, Paul: Alois Kuperion (1891–1966) , published in Arunda , Schlanders 1976
• JR: Kuperion, Alois . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 6 , supplements H-Z . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1962, p. 177 .
• Coupon. Painting is my purpose in life. Dipingere è tutta la mia vita , ed. v. Department for Culture of the City of Merano in collaboration with Merano Art, Edition Raetia , Bozen 2015, ISBN 978-88-7283-548-7