Klemens Brosch

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Portrait (1925/26)

Klemens Brosch (born October 21, 1894 in Linz , † December 17, 1926 there ) was an Austrian painter and graphic artist .

Life

Klemens Brosch was born on October 21, 1894 in the Upper Austrian capital Linz, then the capital of the Archduchy of Austria above the Enns. He was the sixth of eight children of Franz Philipp and Elisabeth Brosch, née Kastner. This came from a long-established gingerbread and confectioner family , the father was the main school director . As a child, Klemens encouraged his father and his eldest brother Franz to do photographic, botanical and drawing work. Later, Klemens Brosch led extensive hikes through Upper Austria, but also some to Germany as far as Nuremberg and through Northern Italy. After elementary school , he attended several schools in Linz and graduated from the imperial-royal state high school in 1913 . His teachers noticed him on the one hand for "inciting gross nonsense" and on the other hand for his talent for drawing. In 1913 he founded the Linz artists' association MAERZ with his brother Franz and others . Four years later he resigned his membership "in disgust".

Due to a lung disease, Klemens Brosch was initially exempted from military service until autumn 1914. He was able to begin his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which was interrupted with the mobilization of Austria-Hungary in August 1914. At the front in Galicia (Poland), Brosch drew restless, realistic, radical, accusatory. His lung disease was treated with morphine , as was not unusual at the time . It wasn't until much later that he realized that he could no longer endure life without morphine. After almost fifty days at the front, Brosch was released from military service. War depictions, some of which are reminiscent of Goya , occupied him until 1916. The years 1915–1919 brought great success - he received several prizes and grants - and continued his studies in Vienna with Professor Ferdinand Schmutzer until 1919. In 1920 he married Johanna Springer in Linz. The marriage remained without children. Both inflation and the procurement of morphine and cocaine soon made them destitute. Brosch was well known in Linz and relied on the sale of his work. His wife soon became addicted too. Dark romanticism mostly dominates the images of this time. Desired orders from the academic graphic artist for the design of banknotes or postage stamps and an appointment to the Austrian state printing company in Vienna did not materialize. At the beginning of 1924 he underwent the first of two weaning cures in what was then the state insane asylum in Niedernhart-Linz (today: Landes-Nervenklinik Wagner-Jauregg ), both of which were unsuccessful. His last commissions this year included the graphic documentation of buildings for the Upper Austrian Water and Electricity Company. On December 17, 1926, Klemens Brosch went to his death on the Pöstlingberg in Linz with the help of chloroform , which for him was the “only logical way out”.

plant

Emergency money Neufelden (1920)

Klemens Brosch's artistic oeuvre today comprises a total of around a thousand works, most of them in smaller formats with pen in ink or pencil, from 1924 mainly with brush and ink, only a few oil paintings and watercolors, a few around fifteen lithographs , about 25 exlibris prints, including his own "book intrinsic character" as well as designs for so-called Token of nine municipalities in Upper Austria. During the currency reform around 1920 it was used to save coin metal. Of his 35 printed designs, there are often several editions and versions, as well as special editions that were primarily intended for collectors. It is significant that only this emergency money was printed in very large editions and, often not considered as his work, is still easily available today. By far the largest part, 452 of his works, are deposited in the Upper Austrian State Museums in Linz and are therefore difficult to access to the public, the rest are privately owned. Only as a rarity does one of his pictures appear on the international art market every few years.

Ex-Libris (1916)

Like all decisive artistic endeavors, the work of Klemens Brosch eludes the stylistic terms used in art history. Terms such as hyperrealism , symbolism or naturalistic surrealism fall short. Brosch did not obey any ideology. Some of his study sheets or the pictures of trees in bloom, such as the "Cherry Blossoms" in 1912, are reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts ( ukiyo-e ), individual depictions of nature to Jacob Izaaksoon van Ruisdael , other of his works to Max Klinger , Caspar David Friedrich or, as mentioned, his pictures of the world war to Francisco Goya . Horst Janssen , who died in 1995, could be artistically related to him in terms of the aspects of contouring and perspective right up to the subject of individual sheets. If you follow Paul Klee's sentence : "Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible", then Klemens Brosch can stand up for a promise made by art with his imagery, its promise to preserve the " human condition ." Brosch, who is also was able to express exactly in writing, noted in 1924 during his rehab treatment: "The outline in the drawing is like the leitmotif in music." The titles that Brosch gave some of his pictures are indicative: "Landscape in the Storm" (1910), "Bathing jetty" (1911), "Weigelia blossoms" and "Cherry blossoms" (1912), "In der Felseinöde" (1912), "Entrance into the forest" (1913), "The attack" (1915), " Siesta the executioner ”(1916),“ Evening song ”(1917),“ Pianist at the window ”(1920),“ The gates open ”(1922),“ Christ drives the thieves out of the temple ”(1922),“ Montage der Generators ”(1924),“ Garden wall in front of Niedernhart ”(1924),“ The evening ”(1925),“ Two telephone workers ”(1926) or“ Meadow with spread out laundry e "(1926).

Based on biography and the circumstances of the time, it is understandable that there is no complete documentation of the works of Klemens Brosch. Quite a few of his pictures were also destroyed, for example by fire, while traces of others are lost, for example in the course of legacies. There are several articles and some catalogs on the occasion of exhibitions of his works. The one outstanding among them, both in terms of the number of illustrations and of the comments, is likely to be that of Otfried Kastner in print in 1963. The most extensive scholarly and stylistically remarkable analysis of Klemens Brosch's biography, work and art-historical reception is offered by Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller's work , which the first part of this article largely follows. Literary sat Richard Wall deals with the life and work Brosch.

Watercolors and pen drawings (gallery)

  • Bathing jetty (watercolor, 1911)

  • Weigelia Blossoms (pen drawing, 1912)

literature

  • Otfried Kastner: "Klemens Brosch", J. Wimmer Verlag Linz 1963, 44 pages, 43 black and white illustrations
  • Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller: Klemens Brosch . Ritter-Verlag Klagenfurt, 1991. 262 pages, 17 color, 179 black and white illustrations. ISBN 978-3-85415-100-5
  • Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller et al .: Klemens Brosch (1894–1926). Art and addiction of the drawing genius. Exhibition catalog Landesgalerie Linz u. City Museum Linz , Anton Pustet Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7025-0855-5
  • Richard Wall : Klemens Brosch or An Exercise into the Impossible. A triptych . Ritter-Verlag Klagenfurt, 2001, 141 pages, 43 black-and-white illustrations. ISBN 3-85415-289-2

Web links

Commons : Klemens Brosch  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Broch, Klemens
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Linz
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1926
Place of death Linz