The nameless 1914

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The Nameless 1914 (Albin Egger-Lienz)
The nameless 1914
Albin Egger-Lienz , 1916
Tempera on canvas
245 × 476 cm
Army History Museum, Vienna

The Nameless 1914 is a monumental painting by the Austrian painter Albin Egger-Lienz from 1916. It belongs to the collection of the Military History Museum in Vienna .

The work is regarded as the artist's direct engagement with the de-individualization and industrialization of warfare in the 20th century, which was experienced in the First World War .

Image description

The picture is painted with tempera on canvas . It has a width of 476 cm and a height of 245 cm. The signature and date "Egger Lienz 1916" are in the lower left corner .

The group picture shows 16 soldiers crouching in one direction, almost like monkeys. Their attitude is that which soldiers take up against continuous enemy fire. The individual is only preserved in details, for example a soldier carries a trumpet instead of a rifle. It tends to be greatly reduced by the hiding posture in the trenches and by helmets and caps pulled into the faces. The composition suggests a rhythmically structured movement from top right to bottom left. The bottom folds of the trenches seem to follow the thrust. By delimiting the edge of the picture, the soldiers' bodies are partially cut off, which reinforces the effect of only seeing a section of a larger movement. At the same time, the two-dimensional image design and the low-variant formal language give the painting a clear directness. The narrow, upward drawn horizon intensifies the oppressive effect.

The choice of the title The Nameless 1914 reflects the artist's attitude towards the industrialized slaughter of warfare in the 20th century. 1914 was the year the First World War began. The nameless ones cannot be assigned to any particular nation either, as Egger-Lienz did not unambiguously model their uniforms on any of the warring states.

Origin and reception

Study of the Nameless . Pencil, charcoal and white chalk, 63 × 90 cm, 1916

Albin Egger-Lienz was one of the few artists from Tyrol who had worked in the area from 1915 to 1917 for the kuk war press quarter (KPQ). The war press office gave him permission to “paint at the front”, which meant that he was not accepted into the KPQ's stand and, as an official war painter , was not bound by the KPQ's tax regulations. As a quasi freelance war painter, he worked in Folgaria and Trento from 1916, the year The Nameless 1914 was created . The painting was preceded by several preliminary forms and drafts, in which Egger-Lienz developed the realism of the depiction, gained from a direct view of the war, into a well-composed, expressive symbolism .

The first public exhibition of The Nameless 1914 took place in Bolzano in 1917, still during the war . The reactions of contemporary art critics, especially after an exhibition the following year in Munich's Glaspalast , were almost exclusively enthusiastic. The work was instantly given an outstanding position in the genre of war painting. Although the painting looked unusual in form, a depiction of soldiery elevated into the mythical was quite typical of the time and was aesthetically prepared, for example, by the works of Fritz Erler .

Installation of the painting in the Army History Museum (2015)

Egger-Lienz died in 1926. The time of National Socialism initially did not detract from its public recognition. The Nameless 1914 was the dominant main work of the 1940 special show German soldiers and their opponents held in the Army History Museum . The pacifist, or at least critical of the war, attitude, which was only apparently easy to infer from the work, was fundamentally reinterpreted. The person Albin Egger-Lienz offered the rulers welcome starting points for appropriation in the sense of National Socialist cultural policy, since the artist had distinguished himself early on as an opponent of modernity and as an advocate of folk art . This appropriation seriously damaged his reputation after 1945.

In the Army History Museum, The Nameless 1914 is part of a permanent exhibition on the First World War, which was redesigned in 2014.

Classification in the overall work of the artist

Albin Egger-Lienz (1920)

In the catalog raisonné created by Wilfried Kirschl by Albin Egger-Lienz, The Nameless 1914 bears the number M 390 . The artist himself certified that his painting was of outstanding quality. Between 1904 and 1906 Egger-Lienz had developed from an early academicism to an emphasis on the flat, to a preference for large formats and composition techniques related to those of the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler . The creation of The Nameless 1914 falls into this creative period .

In terms of content, the war, alongside peasantry and religion, was a main theme in Egger-Lienz's oeuvre, to which he devoted himself in various individual motifs and creative facets. Beginning with the design of war postcards in 1915, he quickly said goodbye to a jubilant heroism - of which hardly anything can be found in The Nameless 1914 - and turned to the victims and suffering associated with the war with a humanitarian gesture. After the end of the war, the sheer horror of the war of mass and extermination comes to light again in his pictures.

In the Nameless 1914 is an artistic main concern of Albin Egger-Lienz further shows an example: The work retains its clear reference to a concrete historical events and is also charged excessive and spiritualized symbolic.

Storm. The nameless one . Fresco in the Lienz War Memorial Chapel, 1925

As a later work, Egger-Lienz designed the war memorial chapel in Lienz with four frescoes . For the storm fresco created in the course of this in 1925 . The Nameless He took over the composition of The Nameless 1914 . With an area of ​​236 × 473 cm, it almost reaches the dimensions of the original.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Nicholas S. Saunders, Paul Cornish: Introduction . In: Paul Cornish, Nicholas J. Saunders (Eds.): Bodies in Conflict. Corporeality, Materiality and Transformation . Routledge, London / New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-415-83422-3 , pp. 2 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Wilfried Kirschl: Albin Egger-Lienz 1868–1926. The complete work . tape 1 . Brandstätter, Vienna / Munich 1996, ISBN 3-85447-689-2 , p. 286-287 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Albin Egger-Lienz. In: 1914-2014. 100 years of the First World War. Austrian State Archives , 2014, accessed on December 20, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Walter Reichel: "Press work is propaganda work" - Media Administration 1914-1918: The War Press Quarter (KPQ) . Communications from the Austrian State Archives (MÖStA), special volume 13, Studienverlag , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7065-5582-1 , p. 107 f.
  5. ↑ a b Too good for the drawer: Albin Egger-Lienz. Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz , accessed on December 20, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Kai Artinger: Agony and Enlightenment. War and Art in Great Britain and Germany in WWI . VDG, Weimar 2000, ISBN 978-3-89739-125-3 , pp. 119 and 123 .
  7. ↑ The Army History Museum in Vienna . Böhlau, Graz / Cologne 1960, p. 25 .
  8. ^ First World War. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, accessed on December 20, 2016 .
  9. ^ Gert Ammann: Albin Egger-Lienz 1868–1926. Inventory catalog of the collection in the Museum of the City of Lienz Schloss Bruck . With a foreword by Ila Egger-Lienz. Museum of the City of Lienz, Lienz 2006, p. 126-128 .