Serious couple

Ernst couple in his studio

Ernst Paar (born August 15, 1906 in Graz , Austria ; † January 25, 1986 in Vienna , Austria) was an Austrian painter and graphic artist . He was a member of the Hagenbund and a founding member of the artists' association "Der Kreis" .

Life

Early years and education

Ernst Paar was born in Graz as the son of a businessman and later a commercial employee. Between the ages of 15 and 16, he attended the one-year training course in addition to his apprenticeship as a lithographer in the well-known large printing company Matthey / Wall in Graz. In 1922, in addition to his apprenticeship as a lithographer, he began his training as a painter. He also regularly attended the evening act at the state art school. Although his artistic talent was recognized during his apprenticeship and his scholarship at the state art school was promised, his father spoke out against studying painting.

After his apprenticeship, he went to Stuttgart in Germany in 1925 and initially volunteered in a reproduction technology institute to learn the then still new method of photolithography for offset printing . He found a job as a lithographer and began his training as a working student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart . From the beginning of 1926 to the end of 1927 he was a full student in the drawing class of Hans Spiegel at this academy . He only pursued his job two days a week. In autumn 1927 he also moved to Berlin as a student trainee , but returned to Stuttgart just under a year later in 1928.

The global economic crisis also made itself felt in him and so he took on a new position in Stuttgart as a designer and graphic reproduction artist, but, as it was an unfortunate employment relationship, he provoked his dismissal and had returned to Graz with a fellow painter from Stuttgart. There he took a job as a lithographer to support the family. In his free time he also created many watercolors and paintings , including two of the very rare pictures of the synagogue in Graz, which was burned down by the National Socialists in 1938 . He got to know Wilhelm Thöny better, the President of the Graz Secession , who had made this most important association of Styrian modernism a focus of cultural life in Graz. Thöny was enthusiastic about Paris , where he stayed for a few weeks in 1929. Ernst Paar was also drawn to what was then the “world capital of art” and decided to continue his artistic training here. For almost two years, from the beginning of 1930 to the end of 1931, he studied in Paris with his painter friend Hans Stockbauer at the Académie Julian .

In the autumn of 1931, Paar returned to Graz. The global economic crisis was at its peak. He only found odd jobs. In 1932 he became a member of the Graz Secession and exhibited for the first time and with great success. In that year he mainly painted backyards, factories and urban landscapes. In 1933 he moved to Vienna and was soon accepted into the Hagenbund , the most modern Viennese association at the time, and was one of the most active members and was involved in almost all exhibitions until it was dissolved by the National Socialists.

In 1933 and 1934, two years after his stay in Paris, he created cubist- abstract pictures in which he independently translated his impressions from France. In his exploration of Cubism, he is one of the few artists in Austria who has received this style. In Styria, it is above all Alfred Wickenburg who integrated Cubism into his style as early as 1921 and Georg Pevetz . Otherwise one only knows something comparable from his friends Hans Stockbauer and Kurt Weber as well as from Grete Wilhelm . The prerequisites for his early reception of this style, which was only updated in Austria after the war, also lie in the orientation of Styrian art from the interwar period to the art scene in Paris and the important role of Thöny and, above all, Wickenburg before the First World War Studied in Paris for 3 years.

Between the wars 1934–1938

According to current knowledge, Engelbert Dollfuss came to power and the workers' uprising in February 1934 left no traces on his work. He himself has left no records of his political attitudes during this time, and no documents have been found so far. A joint work from May 1934 with Rudolf Pointner , Franz Senkinc , Otto Rudolf Schatz and Franz Schacherl in his "house book", and a page designed by him from November 19, 1935, allow conclusions to be drawn about his circle of friends and his political stance. The circle of artists around Franz Schacherl is critical of the regime, which is not only documented in the "house book", but also the arrest of some members after February 1934. It could not be clarified whether Ernst Paar, like Rudolf Pointner, was himself active. Rudolf Pointner and Franz Schacherl knew Ernst Paar from Graz and Otto Rudolf Schatz lived next door to him in the same house. Franz Schacherl's “house book” is, in addition to providing information about left-wing intellectual resistance in Vienna, also an eminently important document for stylistic development in Austria. Between 1934 and 1936, Ernst Paar slowly returned to more realistic, neo-objective forms of design. However, he did not orientate himself on local art , but on artists like Max Beckmann , who had to flee from the National Socialists and go into exile . In 1935 he married Grete Roth in Vienna. He found public recognition for his art in Styria. In 1935 he received the silver medal of the city of Graz for painting. In 1936, Ernst Paar was a member of the Hagebund's hanging committee at the “Special Exhibition of Styrian Children's Art” that Friedrich Aduatz put together. Ernst Paar himself also took part in an exhibition in Brussels that year . The poor economic situation forced him to start commercial printing in 1937 in order to keep himself afloat financially. The private market for modern art is becoming ever narrower, it no longer receives any funding from the corporate state . At the 73rd Hagenbund exhibition in January 1937, an entire room was dedicated to Paar, and his name has a good ring in Vienna. He exhibited still lifes and landscapes and received a lot of press coverage. During this time he urged the Graz Secession to hold an exhibition in the Hagenbund, for which he had already been accepted. However, the exhibition never took place.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the occupation of Austria and the annexation to the German Reich , he was in a difficult situation as a modern, left-wing artist. The Hagenbund was dissolved and the couple had to fight for recognition of their artistic existence. He did not seem to have succeeded in being recognized as a freelance artist, because from 1939 to 1942 he worked as a house graphic artist in an insurance company, in what, according to his diary, was an "unfortunate employment relationship". When he was hired, he was subject to political scrutiny. The surveys by Kreisleitung III of the NSDAP in Vienna against Volksgenossen Paar, which were “plowed” before May 1939, did not give rise to any political concerns. During this time he had friendly contact with opponents of the regime such as Otto Rudolf Schatz, who had gone into hiding in Czechoslovakia , with Karl Wiener and Margret Bilger . In 1942 he was employed as a “freelancer” - in reality compulsory - in the institute for exhibition technology and image statistics of the “Southeast European Society”.

During the Nazi era, Paar did not take part in any exhibition in Styria. In Vienna he exhibited in a group exhibition at the Welz Gallery (formerly Würthle) at Easter 1942 . Peter Richard Oberhuber reported that the exhibition was banned by the Reich Chamber of Culture four days after it opened. The reason was stylistic deviations in the direction of Expressionism , which was counted among the "degenerate art movements" and probably also the problematic subjects of the pictures. A group of Styrian painters had exhibited, all of whom came from the banned Graz Secession, which was particularly heavily attacked by the Nazis before 1938: apart from a couple, these were Hans Fronius , Oberhuber , Stockbauer, Fritz Silberbauer , Rudolf Szyszkowitz , Alois Thum and Wickenburg. The surviving pictures of the couple from this period mostly show no tendency to adapt in terms of style or content, they are documents that he maintains his modern painting style and clearly positions himself beyond the stylistic tolerance limit of the rulers. It can be ruled out that he showed such pictures at Welz; it must have been some of his moderately expressive landscapes. He had to hide the modern work or could only show it to his closest friends.

No documents could be found about membership in the “ Reich Chamber of Fine Arts ” (RKdbK), which all artists had to be with if they wanted to practice their profession. In view of participation in the exhibition at Welz, however, at least recognition of an artistic secondary occupation by the regime in the form of a “liberation certificate” is obvious, as all non-registered persons were in principle prohibited from exhibiting. In the autumn of 1943 Ernst Paar was also sent to war. It remains unclear whether he is suddenly no longer “ indispensable ” because of his participation in the later exhibition at Welz or for other reasons . Ernst Paar was commanded to the Eastern Front , but then came to a unit that was stationed in Münster, Germany, where he had to make “recordings” and “evaluations” with other painters as draftsmen. In his free time he was able to draw and watercolors with a family friend and even sell some landscape paintings at a Christmas exhibition in Stuttgart, where his sister Bertha lived. Later he came to Belgium , towards the end of the war he was taken prisoner by Russia and returned to Vienna in October 1945.

Time after the war and founding of the artist group "Der Kreis"

Ernst Paar gradually re-established himself as a commercial artist in Vienna after the war. As early as 1946, he participated in exhibitions at home and abroad as a member of the re-established Graz Secession. In June 1946 he was one of the 10 founding members and from 1948 to 1950 president of the artist group "Der Kreis" in Vienna and played a major role in the success of this association. Other members included in the early days of the Association. a. the emigrants Greta Freist and Gottfried Goebel as well as Hans Stockbauer, Arnulf Neuwirth , Karl Prantl , Josef Schagerl , Hubert Fischlhammer .

Mosaic in the Matzleinsdorf high-rise

At the beginning of 1948 he took up an assistant position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna . Because of a caricaturing drawing in the left-wing intellectual, the KPÖ- related "Austrian Diary", the ÖVP education minister Felix Hurdes refused to sign his appointment because he viewed the caricature as an abuse of the government. Ernst Paar had to leave the academy at the end of January. Paar reacted aggressively: in 1949 he responded to this act of political discipline because of his closeness to the KPÖ with a series of exhibitions that showed that he was one of the most important Austrian artists: Socialist Mayor of Vienna, Theodor Körner , exhibited in Prague and Brno and was presented in a solo exhibition in Bengtfors , Sweden . In 1950 he had a personal exhibition at the Neue Galerie Graz and in 1954 in Linz . Until the 1950s, he was involved in almost all of the major thematic exhibitions in Vienna. a. at "Wien builds on" and at the trade exhibition in 1951, at the u. a. his friends Heribert Potuznik and Hans Stockbauer were his employees. In that year he resigned from the professional association of Austrian visual artists , since he had become a member of the federation of modern visual artists of Austria . Albert Paris Gütersloh was chairman here, he was one of the deputies with Carry Hauser and Gustav K. Beck . The federation was founded in response to the numerous attacks on the representatives of modern art by the ART CLUB , the “Kreis”, the Graz Secession and other progressive associations. Later he was also a delegate of the Graz Secession on the board of this federation.

In 1950 he exhibited graphics and painting in the Neue Galerie in Graz. In 1951 - Ernst Paar is now Vice President of the "Kreis" - he organized an exhibition with small-format works in the Leykam-Passage in Graz. Also Friedensreich Hundertwasser took the opportunity for the first time in Graz.

In 1952 he executed two large sgraffiti on behalf of the municipality of Vienna . In 1953 he received first prize in the competition for the poster for the Wiener Festwochen , but it was not printed, like most of his award-winning works. In 1954 he applied to head the commercial graphics department at the Vienna Academy of Applied Arts, but was not appointed. In 1955 he took part in the large exhibition “10 Years of Painting and Sculpture in Austria” in the Künstlerhaus and exhibited in the Zeno Gallery in Zurich and in Victoria , Canada . In May 1956 he had a personal in the “Neue Galerie” in Vienna. A visitor book published at the time provides information about his extensive circle of friends and acquaintances. These include u. a. the writer Theodor Sapper , whose still unpublished novel "Chain Reaction Contra", according to Elias Canetti, represents one of the most important critical debates against fascism that arose under the Nazi regime and an entry by Axl Leskoschek , which suggests an old friendship. In May 1956 the Neue Galerie at the Joanneum in Graz presented him in a group exhibition.

On the occasion of his 50th birthday in September 1956 he had a large personal in the Vienna Künstlerhaus as part of the artist group “Der Kreis”, the Federal Ministry of Education bought the painting “View of Paris” for the Austrian Gallery , and the Albertina acquired watercolors. In 1960 he took part in the exhibition of the still living members of the old Hagenbund, in which each member showed two works from the time before the Nazi ban and two new works. The emigrants also took part in this exhibition. In June 1962 he gave the opening speech on behalf of the members of the former Hagenbund in the memorial exhibition for Otto Rudolf Schatz. This year he was represented at the exhibition of Austrian graphics in Ljubljana .

Late years

Couple in front of his numerous illustrations

His main field as a commercial artist during the economic miracle was that of book covers and book bindings, which he mainly made for the Zsolnay publishing house . In 1963 he received the Theodor Körner Prize . In 1965 he was awarded the City of Vienna Prize for Applied Art . During these years, Paar also designed several mosaics and sculptures for the municipality of Vienna. In 1970 he designed a wall painting measuring 11 by 3 meters for the retirement home in Döbling. Ernst Paar received numerous prizes, including first prizes in poster and commercial graphic competitions.

Nevertheless, he had numerous personal exhibitions in which free graphics and painting were shown: u. a.1965 in the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, 1971 in the Kulturhaus Graz and in the Wiener Sezession, 1974 in the Sezession Graz and 1978 in the Galerie Würthle in Vienna. In 1984 he was represented in the Salzburg exhibition Austrian Watercolorists with works that received special attention in the press. Jan Tabor said that his drawings and watercolors were not inferior to those of Wilhelm Thönys. With his oil paintings from the interwar period, he counted him among the most interesting representatives of Austrian classical modernism.

In 2016 a sales exhibition , for which a book was specially published, took place in the galerie artziwna in Vienna.

death

Ernst Paar died on January 25, 1986 in Vienna. He was buried in an honorary grave at the Vienna Central Cemetery .

Awards

• 1935 silver medal of the city of Graz in painting
• 1956 Awarded the title of professor
• 1963 Theodor Körner Prize
• 1965 City of Vienna Prize for Applied Art
• 1969 State Prize for work from all areas of applied art
• 1982 Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna in silver
• 1986 Grave of honor of the City of Vienna at the Vienna Central Cemetery

literature

• Günter Eisenhut: Ernst couple. In: Günter Eisenhut, Peter Weibel (ed.): Modernism in Dunkler Zeit - Resistance, persecution and exile of Styrian artists 1933–1945. Graz 2001, ISBN 3-85420-564-3 , pp. 308-315.
• Hans Vollmer: General Lexicon of the Fine Artists of the 20th Century. Volume 3, Leipzig 1956, ISBN 978-3-86502-127-4 , p. 535.
• Tino Erben: The Hagenbund. Special exhibition of the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna. Vienna 1975, p. 33.
• gallery artziwna, “Ernst Paar” Vienna 2016

Web links

Commons : Ernst Paar  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ernst Paar in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna