Ernst Stöhr

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Ernst Stöhr, self-portrait (around 1886)

Ernst Stöhr (born November 1, 1860 in St. Pölten ; † June 17, 1917 there ) was an Austrian painter , poet and musician and co-founder of the Vienna Secession .

Life

Childhood and youth

Ernst Stöhr was born on November 1st, 1860, the fourth of five sons of the violin maker Karl Stöhr. He had a sheltered childhood that was shaped by his father's love for music and his mother's care. His uncle Ludwig Stöhr, music teacher, composer and head of the St. Pölten Music Association, also lives in the house association. Ernst Stöhr shares with him not only a love for music but also a close connection to nature. Stöhr's high musical talent, which extends to painting as well as poetry and music, is noticeable early on. Stöhr hesitates as to which of his talents he should develop.

He decided to paint and began studying at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna in 1877 . Due to his broad education, Stöhr is a welcome guest in various artist circles and becomes a member of the Hagenbund . But the formalistic training at the arts and crafts school repels him. He broke off in 1879 and switched to the Academy of Arts, where he worked with Carl Rudolf Huber and August Eisenmenger . But here, too, Stöhr fights against heroic-romantic academism and clashes with the commercialized Viennese artist scene. He left the academy in 1887 and traveled a lot between St. Pölten, Melk and Wochein (Slovenia), where his cousin Friederike "Fritzi" Tirmann ran a hotel. In between he always retreats to seclusion. Financial problems force him to return to Vienna.

Co-founding and shaping the Vienna Secession

Stöhr's Vampire appeared as part of his drawings and poems in Ver Sacrum magazine in 1899 .

In 1895 Ernst Stöhr organized an exhibition for Theodor von Hörmann , an early critic of academism, which caused a great stir. A year later he becomes a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus and in the same year receives an award for his picture Christmas Eve . He was one of the “boys” around Gustav Klimt , who left the “cooperative” and founded the “Association of Visual Artists” , the so-called Vienna Secession , with Koloman Moser , Carl Moll and 15 other artists in 1897 . Through a large number of programmatic writings in Ver Sacrum, Stöhr played a decisive role in the self-image of the new group of artists and was extremely productive during this time. For his brother, the doctor Hermann Stöhr, he designed the facade painting “Medicine” on his home in St. Pölten in 1898 . He marries his cousin Friederike Tirmann and builds a studio near her hotel on Lake Wochein. His own printing press allows him to experiment with various printing techniques. The 12th issue of Ver Sacrum is dedicated to him alone and is designed by him. Stöhr participated intensively in numerous exhibitions of the association, including the important 14th exhibition of the Secession in 1902 ( Beethoven exhibition ), for whose catalog he wrote the foreword.

Melancholy and depression

Stöhr suffered a first blow of fate in 1902, when his uncle Ludwig, whom he admired and whom he had previously looked after for a long time, died due to intensive work. In 1904 he rushed to St. Pölten again because his mother became seriously ill. Stöhr cared for them, like his father in 1909, devotedly. The care and loss of loved ones repeatedly plunge Stöhr into a mood of sadness and depression, which is also reflected in his pictures. Stöhr intensifies his engagement with religion and philosophy. In 1915 his “Christ Image ” received the Reichel Prize . Italy's entry into the war turns Wochein into a war zone, which puts Stöhr into deep depression. He travels to Wochein and creates pictures there that deal with hopeless situations, such as death and girls . In 1917 he was taken to the Tulln Sanatorium, which released him after a few weeks. Stöhr travels to St. Pölten, plays the grave song he composed for himself in 1912 and hangs himself on June 17th in the kitchen of his parents' house.

Services

Through his diverse work as a poet, excellent musician and painter, Stöhr can be described as a pioneer of the secessionist concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk . His landscape paintings and portraits are in part committed to the canon of forms of the 19th century, which he himself fought. A characteristic of Stöhr's oeuvre is the attempt to bring the artist's feeling into his work. Almost all of his works have the symbolic content in common, which makes Stöhr one of the main representatives of Austrian symbolism. Dealing with many different styles and forms (pieces of music, poems, dramas) make Stöhr perhaps the most universal artist of the Vienna Secession . However, his instability prevented him from implementing all of his visions and ultimately led him to stand in the shadow of the great artistic personalities of the Secession. Recently there has been a renewed interest in Ernst Stöhr. The St. Pölten City Museum is currently setting up a department that focuses entirely on its work.

Ernst Stöhr's estate is in the St. Pölten City Museum; important paintings are u. a. to be found in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere , the Albertina (Vienna) and in the Wien Museum .

Works

  • Torment of Conscience, 1897

  • The Woman, 1898

  • From the catalog of the Beethoven exhibition with stylized artist monograms

  • Mitzi, 1907

literature

  • G. Frodl:  Stöhr Ernst. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 13, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2007–2010, ISBN 978-3-7001-6963-5 , p. 292 f. (Direct links on p. 292 , p. 293 ).
  • Marian Bisanz-Prakken: Holy Spring. Gustav Klimt and the Beginnings of the Vienna Secession 1895–1905 . Christian Brandstätter, Vienna and Munich 1999, ISBN 3-85447-856-9 .
  • Gabriele Bösch: The Art of Inner Seeing: Ernst Stöhr - Life and Work; an art historical analysis , Univ.-Diss., Marburg 1993
  • Josef Engelhart (Ed.): Ernst Stöhr to the memory . Frisch, Vienna 1918
  • Kathrin Pokorny-Nagel: Ernst Stöhr . In: State capital St. Pölten (ed.): Sensuality and temptation. Art Nouveau and Secession Art from Andri to Olbrich , St. Pölten 1999

Web links

Commons : Ernst Stöhr  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baptismal Register - 01/10 | St. Poelten Cathedral | St. Pölten, rk. Diocese (western Lower Austria) | Austria | Matricula Online. Retrieved November 6, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Stöhr, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Polten
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 1917
Place of death St. Polten