Franz Lettner

Franz Lettner (born July 21, 1909 in Salzburg , † 1998 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian painter .

Life

Sgraffito Guardian Angel at the house Hormayrstr. 17 in Innsbruck (1958)

Lettner attended the trade school in Salzburg and the technical school for sculpture in Hallein . From 1932 he lived in Innsbruck. From 1936 to 1940 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Carl Fahringer , Herbert Dimmel and Herbert Boeckl . From 1941 he had to do military service in World War II , and he returned from the ensuing captivity in 1946. In 1956 he was appointed curator at the Tyrolean State Museum , where he also had a large studio. He went on study trips to Greece , North Africa and Israel and had numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, including a 1969 retrospective  in the Tyrolean State Museum. Lettner was a member and for many years President of the Tyrolean Artists .

Lettner particularly painted landscapes and portraits in oil . As part of the art-in-building campaign of the State of Tyrol in the post-war period, he created works in public spaces such as a sgraffito  at the Rinnerhof recreation home in Rinn (1956) and the guardian angel sgraffito at the residential building at Hormayrstrasse 17 in Innsbruck (1958). His work is in the tradition of Expressionism of  the 1920s and the models Oskar Kokoschka  and Herbert Boeckl.

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According to his own admission, Lettner's life's work comprises around 5000 works in a wide variety of formats. However, nothing has survived from before 1945. Pictures are known from the 1950s, mainly figurative depictions, which with their black outline are reminiscent of Georges Rouault or the early Emil Nolde . In a later phase he completely detached himself from representational references and especially in the cycle of what he called the "Orphic World" he created small-format oil paintings on cardboard of perfect abstractness, of which, however, only a small part found their way to the art market during his lifetime . In the free play with form and color, compositions develop that, far from any analytical or even geometric construction, express themselves in flowing design, inspired by feeling and sensation, with the color setting the counterpoints. In his own words, in a playful experiment, he gave space to a pictorial development from which objective associations could crystallize, which were subsequently worked out - often as dream landscapes or mythological scenarios - and led to more or less fantastic image names. He then transferred these approaches to a larger format, later switching from oil to acrylic for health reasons . This resulted in canvas pictures and those in mixed media on cardboard, some of which unfold their eruptive power in pure abstraction, such as the "Crystallization of Precious Stones" from 1961, shown as the title page of the Lettner monograph from 1984. But mostly they are from landscape painting - as a rule with staffage - obligatory and here sometimes modeled on Herbert Boeckl's model with soft shapes and rather muted colors. Others abstract from the representational to varying degrees and, over time, give space to increasingly rugged forms and glowing color contrasts, which earned Lettner the nickname of the "old savage". In this way he remains the border crosser between dream and reality in his later work. He has always refused a stylistic cataloging, he wanted "the romanticism of the vast landscapes as well as the mysticism of the inner faces" to speak for itself and is somewhere between landscape expressionism , Fauvism and abstract expressionism .

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  The grotto , 1960

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  In the Garden of Eden , 1983

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  The evening before the city , 1988

In the early years Lettner's signature was the bare initial "L", later the full family name, both in cursive.

Awards

• Prize of the state capital Innsbruck for artistic creation , 3rd prize painting and graphics, 1955
• Professional title Professor , 1971
• Decoration of Honor for Art and Culture of the City of Innsbruck, 1980

literature

• Lettner, Franz . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 218 .
• Christoph Bertsch (Ed.): Art in Tyrol, 20th century: significantly expanded and revised inventory catalog of the collection of the Institute for Art History at the University of Innsbruck including documentation of legacies and bequests in two volumes. Innsbruck 1997. Volume 1, pp. 380–385 ( urn: nbn: at: at-ubi: 2-7284 )
• Heinz von Mackowitz: Franz Lettner, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1967.
• Franziska Tsitsos-Lettner (Ed.): Franz Lettner - a book with small pictures from five decades, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1990.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frick, Schmid-Pittl: Art in building on public buildings: Tyrolean War Victims Association, Rinnerhof Recreational Home. In: Tyrolean art register . Retrieved March 26, 2018 . 
2. ^ Müller, Wiesauer: Art in building on public buildings: Sgraffito Guardian Angel. In: Tyrolean art register . Retrieved March 26, 2018 . 
3. ^ Verena Konrad: Between the center and the periphery. The development of art in North Tyrol since 1945. In: Office of the Tyrolean provincial government and the South Tyrolean provincial government (ed.): Culture reports 2006: Fine arts. Innsbruck / Bozen 2006, pp. 11–17 ( PDF; 179 kB )
4. ^ Franz Lettner, foreword to the folder Franz Lettner 80, without place and date.
5. ^ Heinz von Mackowitz, Franz Lettner, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1967, page 5.
6. ^ Franz Lettner, accompanying text to Franz Lettner - a book with small pictures from five decades, Ed. Franziska Tsitsos-Lettner, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1990.
7. ^ Franziska Lettner, Franz Lettner, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1984 (at amazon with title page).
8. ^ Herbert Boeckl, Pictures in the Belvedere Vienna, digital.belvedere.at. Lettner's counterpart would be the Garden of Eden, acrylic on canvas, from 1983.
9. ^ W. Schaber, preface to the Franz Lettner 80 folder , without place and date.
10. ↑ See Heinz von Mackowitz, Franz Lettner, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1967, page 7.
11. ^ Franz Lettner, accompanying text to Franz Lettner - a book with small pictures from five decades, Ed. Franziska Tsitsos-Lettner, Verlag Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck 1990.
12. ↑ City of Innsbruck: Prize of the state capital Innsbruck for artistic creation (PDF; 197 kB)
13. ↑ City of Innsbruck: Decoration of Honor for Art and Culture (PDF; 306 kB)