Anton Mahringer
Anton Mahringer (born September 26, 1902 in Neuhausen auf den Fildern , Baden-Württemberg , German Empire ; † December 29, 1974 in Villach , Carinthia , Austria ) was an Austrian painter who is particularly known for his landscape watercolors . In addition to Sebastian Isepp , Anton Kolig and Franz Wiegele , Mahringer was part of the Nötscher circle .
Life
Childhood, school education and teaching
Anton Mahringer was born on September 26, 1902, the third of seven children in Neuhausen auf den Fildern near Stuttgart . His father, Johann Alois Mahringer, who came from a family with many children who ran a farm on the Härtsfeld in the Swabian Alb , worked as a primary school teacher in Neuhausen. The paternal ancestors come from Upper Austria ; Sebastian Maringer, who came from there, married into the Swabian farm in 1685. His mother, Pauline Mahringer, née Bauer, was the only daughter of the inn owner “Zur Post” in Neuhausen. She worked in the local post office with her widowed mother . In 1904 he moved to Schwäbisch Gmünd with his parents and siblings , after their father had completed his second education at the Technical University in Stuttgart as a technical and trade teacher and a position as a teacher at the local trade school and technical school for goldsmiths received. In later years his father was even appointed to the board of trade schools.
When he was just seven years old, his mother died at the age of 33 as a result of stillbirth of the eighth child. After elementary school, Anton Mahringer attended the secondary school in Schwäbisch Gmünd. By teaching his father at the college for goldsmiths, he already got the opportunity to take part in painting courses. In the following years, his father increasingly took on political offices and was, among other things, parliamentary group leader of the Christian Center Party , and later also city councilor and deputy mayor of Schwäbisch Gmünd. After graduating from secondary school with a high school diploma , he began a brief activity at the Stuttgart customs office in 1921 . That same year he suffered a knee injury in a sports accident, which was followed by a protracted knee inflammation. After another knee operation in 1922, after which he had a lifelong stiff leg, Mahringer had to end his training at the customs office for health reasons and began an apprenticeship at a bank in Schwäbisch Gmünd. On the side, he continued to attend painting courses at the technical college for goldsmiths and made his first contacts with local artists at the same time.
Admission to the Stuttgart School of Applied Arts and transfer to the Stuttgart Academy
In 1924, after completing a two-year apprenticeship, he ended his banking career and was admitted to the Stuttgart School of Applied Arts under Rector Bernhard Pankok . At the same time, he attended the evening act of the Stuttgart Academy to prepare for the entrance exam at the Academy. A year later he was accepted at the academy and became a student in the drawing class under Arnold Waldschmidt . His father was now a second marriage to the owner of a large orchard in Schwäbisch Gmünd. Anton Mahringer set up his first studio here in a garden house and began painting landscapes and figurative studies. On the occasion of a summer excursion at the academy, Mahringer came to Tyrol in 1925 , where he was first confronted with the high mountains . In 1926 Mahringer visited the International Art Exhibition in Dresden , where he was particularly impressed by Max Slevogt's Egyptian landscapes and the German Expressionists . In the spring of 1927 Mahringer received the prize for the best nude drawing as well as the prize for total annual performance at the academy competitions and used the prize money for a painting and study trip to Italy , where he visited Milan , Florence , Orvieto , Rome , Naples and Palermo , among others . Here he studied the masters of Quattro and Cinquecento and did research on Leonardo da Vinci and Luca Signorelli .
That same year he visited the Austrian capital of Vienna for the first time on another excursion to the Stuttgart Academy . A year later, Mahringer switched from drawing to painting at the academy and became the first student of Anton Kolig , who had just been appointed professor from Carinthia to the academy in Stuttgart. Under Kolig he dealt intensively with his nudes and in the same year visited a van Gogh exhibition in Karlsruhe . In the summer of 1928, Kolig and his students went on an excursion to Nötsch in the Gail Valley for the first time , where Kolig lived before his appointment to Stuttgart. There they met Franz Wiegele , who has also been living here since he was born , and whose sister Katharina Kolig was married to. With Kolig, the study group undertook numerous excursions into the Carinthian mountain landscape and went on hikes to the Dobratsch , Weissensee , Plöcken area , Wolayer See and Windischen Höhe . In the Carinthian Gail Valley , Mahringer also began to paint his first landscapes.
First teaching position and first master's studio
In the following year, 1929, he took over Kolig's second class and also received a master's studio and a scholarship from the Stuttgart Academy. Subsequently, under Kolig, he became one of his leading employees in the newly established mural painting workshop at the academy. Also in 1929, Kolig received the order from the Province of Carinthia to create a cycle of frescoes in the Kolig Hall, which is now named after him, in the Klagenfurt country house . In the same year Kolig began to work with a few students, with Anton Mahringer in particular playing a key role in the execution of the frescoes. At the same time, Mahringer made friends with the art historian Otto Demus , who had just finished his studies and accepted the position of state curator for Carinthia . Other Carinthian friends he made during this time were the head of the study library and writer Max Pirker , the editor-in-chief Heinz Paller , the art historian Walter Frodl , as well as the primary school director and poet Andreas Fischer.
Only in December 1929 did Mahringer return to the academy in Stuttgart and in the following summer 1930 continued his work on the frescoes of the country house in Klagenfurt. He belonged to a group of around 20 students from the Stuttgart Academy, all of whom worked on the frescoes; including his future wife Regina Peschges . There were also students from Berlin , including his younger brother Paul (1904–1969), who had also devoted himself to art studies after completing his training in the teachers' seminar in Schwäbisch Gmünd. Hans Gassebner , of the same age, came from Ulm . In that year Mahringer's contacts with Kolig's brother-in-law Franz Wiegele also intensified. On October 10, 1930, the frescoes were ceremoniously handed over in the Klagenfurt country house; around eight years later, these were to be knocked off by the National Socialists in the winter of 1938/39 . After completion, Anton Mahringer stayed in Nötsch with his younger brother and Hans Gassebner. His friend Otto Demus arranged a first small exhibition with works by Mahringer in the Klagenfurt bookstore Leon .
Relocation to the Gail Valley in 1931
In the spring of 1931 he returned briefly to the Stuttgart Academy, where he soon received a Baden-Württemberg state scholarship for a summer stay in Rome. In the Italian capital he met the later Teilhard de Chardin researcher François-Albert Viallet and the German painters Werner Gilles and Karl Kluth . After his stay in Rome, Mahringer did not return to Stuttgart, but moved entirely to the Gailtal, where he and Hans Gassebner settled in the village of Labientschach , around three kilometers from the center of Nötsch. His younger brother Paul lived in the immediate vicinity in Saak , which today, like Labientschach, belongs to the market town of Nötsch in the Gailtal. Two days before his 30th birthday married Anton Mahringer on 24 September 1932 in Hamburg his former classmate Regina Peschges who had completed the same year the Stuttgart Academy. The honeymoon of the two took them via Cologne to Mahringer's new home, Carinthia. In that year the lawyer Franz Feldner from Villach , the state building director Wilhelm Effenberger and other collectors acquired the first works by Anton Mahringer. Just one year later, in 1933, their daughter Monika was born.
In the spring of 1934 the Mahringer couple and their painter friend Hans Gassebner went on a five-month trip to Dalmatia , where they lived together in a rented house. On the way back via Venice , Mahringer attended the Biennale di Venezia ; Then the three painters presented their results of their stay in Dalmatia at an exhibition of the Carinthian Art Association in the then town hall of Villach. In that year the Albertina also acquired Mahringer's first watercolor . Also in 1934 his second child, son Clemens, was born. In the years that followed, up to the outbreak of World War II , Mahringer took part in various exhibitions, including the 1935 exhibition “Young Carinthian Art” at the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz . In 1936 he completed an extensive art tour through his native Germany, whereupon he took part in another exhibition of the Carinthian Art Association in Klagenfurt in the same year. A year later he took part in an exhibition at the Vienna Secession , with the Viennese Art Nouveau painter Carl Moll expressing his appreciation for Anton Mahringer's works to Franz Wiegele. In 1938 his third child, daughter Regina, was born.
Drawing teacher during the Second World War
With the beginning of the Second World War in the following year 1939, Mahringer took over a service as a drawing teacher at the secondary school in Hermagor for the duration of the war . In the same year Mahringer made the acquaintance of the Viennese court advisor Franz Zeis, a friend of the writer Robert Musil , and in 1939 also became a member of the Vienna Secession. Around two years passed before he exhibited in 1941 as part of the “Carinthian Art Show” in the Residenzgalerie Salzburg . It was here that he became acquainted with the Salzburg painter Anton Steinhart and the art dealer Friedrich Welz . Through the mediation of Franz Wiegele, Bruno Grimschitz , the director of the Austrian Gallery in Vienna, visited him for the first time that year . Two years later, his fourth offspring, son Peter, was born. On December 17, 1944, his close friend Franz Wiegele died in a bomb attack on Nötsch, which also completely destroyed his studio. His patron and mentor Anton Kolig was also seriously injured in this attack and buried with his family under rubble, with a large part of his works being destroyed. At the end of the war he quit his school service and settled with his family in the village of St. Georgen im Gailtal , now a cadastral community of Nötsch. Subsequently, he took over Wiegel's studio house in the Kesselwald , where he retired, especially in summer, to paint. The first Mahringer exhibition after the war took place in 1946 in Edith Kleinmayr's gallery in Klagenfurt.
A close friendship develops with art dealer Friedrich Welz
In 1947 Mahringer received a visit from his friend Friedrich Welz in St. Georgen and in November of the same year he organized an exhibition in Salzburg, which resulted in a close friendship with the art dealer. Mahringer's works were also exhibited in 1947 at an exhibition in the Würthle Gallery in Vienna, which was opened by the Vienna City Councilor for Culture Viktor Matejka . In 1948 Anton Mahringer stayed in South Tyrol over the summer and also made a trip to Switzerland from November to December 1948. This year he also received the Austrian State Prize for Painting for his evening landscape (WVAM 400). In 1949 Mahringer was commissioned by the Vienna City Councilor for Culture Viktor Matejka to paint a portrait of Anton Kolig (WVAM 429). In the same year he took part in a competition for the frescoes in Klagenfurt Central Station , which are now (as of 2016), which are now listed , and submitted his design in pastel on paper (WVAM 457). However, the competition was won by Giselbert Hoke, who was just 22 years old ; Instead, Mahringer received the order for four large landscapes in oil from the Villach Federal Railway Directorate.
In November 1949 an exhibition of the works of his two previous year's study trips to South Tyrol and Switzerland took place in the Joanneum in Graz, the majority of which were graphic sheets. When his mentor and long-time companion Anton Kolig died in 1950, Anton Mahringer spent his last summer in the studio in the Kesselwald. In 1951 he traveled a lot and made the first trip to Ischia in the Gulf of Naples with his wife . He was then a guest at his friend Friedrich Welz's in Salzburg and in the summer of 1951 he painted again in the Carnic Alps , in this case on the Feistritzer Alm zum Oisternig , where he lived with a hotelier friend of his. Until 1959, Mahringer came back to the Oisternig every summer to paint here. Anton Mahringer also exhibited with the Carinthian Art Association in Udine and Trieste this year . In the following year 1952 he traveled to Ischia a second time without his wife and in the same year received the order for two murals for the ballroom of the Chamber of Commerce in Klagenfurt.
Successful exhibitions on the 50th birthday
In 1953, a large collective was organized for Mahringer's 50th birthday through the gallery of his Salzburg friend Welz. The success of this exhibition was noticeable beyond the state's borders and led to further exhibitions in the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart , in the municipal gallery "Fähre" in Bad Saulgau and in the Kunsthalle Wuppertal of the Art and Museum Association Wuppertal . At the same time, the first monograph on Anton Mahringer was published by the Galerie Welz publisher , written by his long-time friend Bruno Grimschitz. Also in 1953 Mahringer took part in an exhibition of the Carinthian Art Association in the Vienna Secession and unsuccessfully applied for a professorship at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. Also in 1954, the Mahringer exhibition, shown for the first time in the Galerie Welz on his 50th birthday, was successful across national borders and was shown at the Mannheimer Kunstverein and then in the now listed Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt of the Kunstverein Kärnten. At a graphics competition held in Innsbruck this year , Anton Mahringer received the “Prize of the Province of Carinthia” and exhibited as part of a cultural exchange program between the Province of Carinthia and neighboring countries in Ljubljana and Udine.
Mahringer then received a profitable major order through the mediation of friend and art dealer Friedrich Welz in 1955. He painted five landscapes for the Austrian Embassy in Ottawa and had the proceeds built into a new house with a studio in St. Georgen, which the family moved into moved in the following year, 1956. In the same year he took part in an exhibition at the Modern Gallery in Laibach and was awarded the title of professor by the Austrian President Theodor Körner . At the Wiener Festwochen in 1957, Anton Mahringer and Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel received extensive staff at the Künstlerhaus Vienna . He also received the Great Gold Medal of Honor from the Künstlerhaus. Also in 1957 he traveled to Swabia and in September together with his family to Italy. In 1958 Mahringer was represented again with an exhibition by the Carinthian Art Association in the Modern Gallery in Laibach, whereupon another trip to Dalmatia followed in the same year. On this he was accompanied by his son Clemens and his nephew Wolfgang Mahringer, who came from Stuttgart, and they also took the trip to Herzegovina . This year, too, followed a longer stay in Swabia, with the Ulm Museum organizing a watercolor exhibition of his works.
Increased exhibitions from the end of the 1950s
Towards the end of the 1950s, Mahringer increasingly took part in exhibitions abroad, including a personal exhibition in 1959 in the private gallery of the doctor HP Hoheisel in Frankfurt am Main . This year he also took part in the exhibition of the Carinthian Art Association in Passau , as well as the exhibition of the Viennese Künstlerhaus in Venice. In 1960 a personal show with Mahringer's works took place in the Peter Fischinger Gallery in Stuttgart; he was also involved in the retrospective "Forty Years of Art in Carinthia" in the Klagenfurt Künstlerhaus. This exhibition gave him the first visit to the art collector and his future friend Max Alfert , a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley from California , who visited him in his home town of St. Georgen. This year he also received a visit from the Polish painter, set designer and director Józef Szajna from Krakow , who subsequently also became Mahringer's friends. In 1960 he traveled to Switzerland a second time and visited Ticino here . The year 1961 was mainly characterized by exhibitions in Austria, including a personal exhibition of graphic works by Mahringer in the State Museum of Carinthia in the spring and a subsequent participation in the Salzburg gallery Welz.
Just one year later, he was represented with another personal exhibition at Galerie 61 in Klagenfurt, and this year he traveled to Switzerland for the third time. Visited various localities such as the Vorderrhein , the municipality of Andermatt , the Furkapass and Lukmanierpass mountain passes and the Ortler mountain . In the same year he traveled to the island of Ischia again, where he was quartered again in Sant'Angelo d'Ischia near Serrara Fontana . Several watercolors were created here, which were subsequently exhibited in a personal exhibition at the Neue Galerie at the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz. At the invitation of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Cracow and the director Józef Szajna, Mahringer first traveled to Poland in 1963, where he showed a large exhibition of his work at the company's headquarters, Pałac Sztuki . During this time there was also a trip through Poland and a stay in Nidzica , a place for artists. Through the agency of Galerie Welz, a watercolor exhibition of Mahringer's works by Robert Bergmann from the Sudetenland and a friend of Max Alfert was organized at the University of Pittsburgh in the US state of Pennsylvania in the summer of 1963 . Between August and September 1963, Mahringer traveled to the Scandinavian state of Finland and exhibited there in the Pinx gallery in the capital Helsinki through the mediation of his nephew Wolfgang Mahringer, and on this trip also visited the Soviet city of Leningrad .
Wall mosaic for the Austrian Drau power plants
In 1964, Anton Mahringer received the order from the Austrian Draukraftwerke to create a large wall mosaic, which was subsequently even listed , in the entrance hall of the administration building in Klagenfurt that opened that year. Even before he carried out the order in collaboration with the Spilimbergo mosaic school from autumn to the end of 1964, in spring 1964 he also worked on the mural for the town hall of his birthplace Neuhausen auf den Fildern (WVAM 1034). In March 1965, the Austrian Cultural Institute in Rome organized a watercolor exhibition with Mahringer's works, for which reason Mahringer personally traveled to Rome and Pompeii . In the same year, the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart again showed a personal exhibition, which was then shown together with works by the Ulm painter Wilhelm Geyer in the Lake Constance Museum in Friedrichshafen . In 1966 he traveled to Istanbul for two months , where, among other things, he visited his daughter Monika, who taught at the local St. Georgs College . After his return from Turkey , Mahringer presented the work he created there in the town hall of Villach and later in the Galerie Würthle in Vienna and in the Mirabell Casino in Salzburg.
Travel to the Orient in 1967
After Hartfrid Schindler , the director of the German Goethe and Cultural Institute, visited him in his adopted home St. Georgen in the summer of 1966, he took part in a trip to Tripoli in Lebanon in the following February 1967 at the invitation of Schindler, accompanied by his wife . The couple traveled in their private car to the Lebanon Mountains , the coast of Lebanon, as well as the provincial capital Baalbek and the port city of Byblos . Subsequently, Mahringer exhibited his work in the German cultural institutes in Tripoli and Beirut , as well as in the Jordanian capital Amman . In Jordan, Mahringer visited the old Nabataean settlement of Petra and the world-famous Siq canyon there . He also traveled to the cities of Jerasch , Jericho and Jerusalem . The Six Day War broke out here only shortly after he left Israel . Anton Mahringer made his return trip via Turkey, with a final visit by his daughter in Istanbul. In 1967, the Kärntner Landesgalerie held an exhibition with the works created on the Orient trip. After an illness of the leg, which had been stiffened since 1922, Mahringer underwent an operation in the same year with a seven-week hospital stay at the General Hospital of the City of Vienna . A year later, the Schwäbisch Gmünd City Museum organized a personal exhibition , which was then shown in the Voelter Gallery in the city of Ludwigsburg , a little north of Stuttgart . In the course of these exhibitions, Mahringer traveled to the Rhineland and the Rhine metropolis of Cologne . In 1969 he traveled to Turkey for the third time and made stops in Istanbul, Ephesus , Alanya , Göreme and Ankara . At the Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi , the art academy of Istanbul, and at the Gürsoy Resim Kursu , the art academy of Ankara, personal exhibitions of Mahringer's works took place during this time. In the United States , too , a gallery exhibited his works, this time the Maxwell Gallery from San Francisco , California.
Last study trips in the late 1960s and early 1970s
In autumn 1969 Mahringer made a study trip to France on the Côte d'Azur . The following year, an extensive Mahringer exhibition was shown in the New Gallery of the City of Linz , which was then also presented in Braunau am Inn . In the same year the Austrian Cultural Forum New York showed works by Mahringer; Another personal exhibition followed in October 1970 in the art gallery of the City of Esslingen am Neckar , a little southeast of Stuttgart, at the opening of which Anton Mahringer was personally present. In November 1970 he flew to Spain with his wife on the Costa del Sol , where he also visited the city of Granada . In the same year he also took part in the “Motive” exhibition in the Künstlerhaus Vienna. After his leg problems already severely restricted him in 1971 and longer stays in a sanatorium in Hermagor were necessary, he visited his brother Alois Mahringer on the occasion of his 70th birthday in Härtsfeld despite physical complaints.
On the occasion of Anton Mahringer's 70th birthday the following year, the Carinthian State Gallery presented a large personal exhibition. There were then further exhibitions in 1972 in the Würthle Gallery in Vienna and in the New Gallery of the City of Linz. Furthermore, he participated in an exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Graz . In the same year another and now more extensive monograph with a provisional catalog of Mahringer's works was published by the Welz Gallery. Walter Zettl , who later became President of the Austrian Cultural Association, appeared as the author ; the biography was written by Leopoldine Springschitz , who has been director of the Kärntner Landesgalerie since 1956 and continued to do so until 1975. One of Mahringer's last trips abroad was a trip to Italy in 1973, which took him to Apulia . The gallery of his friend Friedrich Welz in Salzburg held one last personal event for Mahringer that year before his death the following year. After traveling to Italy one last time in 1974, where he visited the capital Rome, Anton Mahringer died on December 29, 1974 during another stay in the hospital in Villach.
Awards
- 1948: Austrian State Prize for Painting
- 1956: Awarded the title of professor by the Austrian Federal President Theodor Körner
- 1957: Great Gold Medal of Honor from the Künstlerhaus Wien
Trivia
In Villach the Anton-Mahringer-Weg is named after him. In the state capital Klagenfurt there is also a small path in the cadastral community of Waltendorf called Anton-Mahringer-Weg .
Picture gallery
Wall painting "Holzknecht" in the large ballroom of the Klagenfurt Chamber of Commerce in Bahnhofstrasse
Wall painting “The Wanderer” in the large ballroom of the Klagenfurt Chamber of Commerce in Bahnhofstrasse
Web links
- Literature by and about Anton Mahringer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Official website about Anton Mahringer
- Anton Mahringer's biography on noetscherkreis.belvedere.at
Individual evidence
- ↑ Abendlandschaft (1948) on noetscherkreis.belvedere.at , accessed on December 11, 2016
- ^ Portrait of Anton Kolig (1949) on noetscherkreis.belvedere.at , accessed on December 11, 2016
- ↑ Draft for the station hall in Klagenfurt (around 1949) on noetscherkreis.belvedere.at , accessed on December 11, 2016
- ↑ GREEN: UNIQUE MOSAIC FOR KLAGENFURT RETTEN , accessed on December 11, 2016
- ↑ Composition of Landscapes and Power Plants (1964) on noetscherkreis.belvedere.at , accessed on December 11, 2016
- ^ Draft for mural Neuhausen (1964) on noetscherkreis.belvedere.at , accessed on December 11, 2016
- ↑ Column 4: "Anton Mahringer died" . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 31, 1974, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
- ↑ a b Commissioned by the Klagenfurt Chamber of Commerce in Klagenfurt (year of origin 1952), with kind permission for publication by Ing.Klaus Köpf, consultant in the WK
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mahringer, Anton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 26, 1902 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Neuhausen on the Fildern , German Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 29, 1974 |
| Place of death | Villach , Austria |