August Friedrich Seebacher

August Friedrich Seebacher (born July 17, 1887 in Cilli , Styria , † December 20, 1940 in Celje , Yugoslavia ) was a Lower Styrian painter , etcher and graphic artist .

Live and act

August Friedrich Seebacher: Market square in Cilli with plague column and Schöbingerhaus, (drawing around 1925)

August Friedrich Seebacher was born as the fourth child of file cutter Anton Seebacher and his wife. He spent his childhood together with three sisters and a brother in the comfort of a petty bourgeois family of craftsmen. He first attended the municipal boys' school and then the kk state high school in his hometown. His talent in drawing and painting showed at an early age and luckily he found understanding teachers at high school who recognized and promoted his creative abilities. After his school education, Seebacher studied painting at the Vienna Academy as a student of Christian Griepenkerl and then completed an internship with Gustav Klimt .

A subsequent study trip took him to Munich and later to Graz . In the Styrian capital, his work received initial recognition at various exhibitions. Nevertheless, after all the years of apprenticeship and traveling, he was drawn back to Cilli. In his hometown, he set up an artist's studio in his parents' house and now mainly painted landscape and genre paintings based on motifs from his homeland in Lower Styria. Seebacher created a further field of activity by opening a painting school in his hometown. The drawing and painting courses he offered were popular and very popular.

When the mostly Slovene-speaking Lower Styria with Seebacher's predominantly German-speaking birthplace Cilli was separated from Styria in the late autumn of 1918 , the deeply rooted and sentimental artist could not cope with this and he increasingly withdrew from the public. Since he could no longer reach the galleries, which were now mainly abroad , and was thus cut off from the art trade, he also got into material hardship. In the first post-war years, Seebacher gradually changed his previous artistic expression. He gradually switched from lively genre compositions and colorful landscapes to simple black and white drawings and finally to graphic art.

In 1926 Seebacher published the first part of a series of pictures with which he wanted to pay tribute to the great past of his native city of Cilli. The portfolio "Celeia antiqua et nova" comprised twelve etchings depicting the Roman Celeia and the legend of the local saint St. Maximilian . The second portfolio followed in 1930 with another twelve etchings and depicts the rise of the Free von Sanneck to the Count of Cilli and princes of the German Empire . The last part, on which Seebacher worked until the end of his life, consisted of a further twelve prints and is about the tragic events surrounding Veronika von Desenitz and the sudden end of Cillier. The third portfolio was published posthumously at Easter 1942 and was published by the Cilli City Department of Culture.

In the 1930s Seebacher mainly worked as an illustrator for magazines and as a commercial artist , at the time he also illustrated a number of travel books and novels . In the last years of his life he was severely restricted in his creativity due to a serious illness and was only able to work on his objects with pain. Seebacher died on December 20, 1940 at his birthplace and was buried two days later in the city cemetery in Celje.

Works

Celeia antiqua et nova (etchings)

• 1. Portfolio: The Roman city and the Maximilian legend . (1926).
• 2. Portfolio: Ascent of the Free of Sanneck . (1930).
• 3. Portfolio: Today Counts of Cilli and nevermore . (1942) One sheet executed, eleven sheets as lithographs.

Honors

During the occupation , today's Gubčeva ulica in Celje had the street name: Seebachergasse.

literature

• Rudolf Pertassek : Cilli, the old Styrian town on the Sann . Edition Strahalm, Graz, 1996 ISBN 3-900526-91-5 .
• Gerhard May : Cilli, city, landscape, history . Cultural Office of the City of Cilli, Cilli, 1943.
• Herbert Erker: The life's work of the painter August Seebacher in: Marburger Zeitung No. 93, 82nd year Marburg-Drau, April 3, 1942.