Leopold Blauensteiner

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Self-portrait

Leopold Blauensteiner (born January 16, 1880 in Vienna , † February 19, 1947 in Vienna) was an Austrian academic painter .

Life

His parents were Leopold Blauensteiner (born November 10, 1841) and Johanna Toscano del Banner (born February 22, 1849). His life fell at a time of political conflict. He was an orphan . His father died shortly after his birth, his mother in 1887. He attended the humanistic Stiftsgymnasium Melk , where u. a. Rudolf Junk and Richard Kurt Donin were his classmates. As a student, he worked on the restoration of the Melk parish church . After graduating from high school, he completed the one-year volunteer year in the military . From 1898 to 1903 he studied painting at the Vienna Academy under Professor Christian Griepenkerl and a few semesters of art history at the University of Vienna . In private he took lessons from Alfred Roller , who directed the magazine of the newly founded Vienna Secession " Ver Sacrum ". In 1903 and 1904 Blauensteiner's color woodcuts were printed in it, his first published works.

In 1904 he married Friderika Berger (born November 22, 1879), with whom he had three sons. In 1916 he bought a house in Melk , where he lived until 1930 and pursued painting in his studio and from 1925 worked as a curator of the Federal Monuments Office for the Melk district.

In 1908 he actively participated in the "art show". In 1909 he became a board member of the Klimt Group. In 1911 he joined the Hagenbund , to which he, also as a board member, belonged until 1921.

In the First World War he joined the Uhlans and in 1916 dismissed as first lieutenant . In 1924 he was a member of the artist group “Die Hand”, which exhibited in the Zedlitzhalle. From 1920 he was a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus . In 1927 he received the Austrian State Prize . In 1929 he received a scholarship for one year of study in Italy for his painting Funeralien , where he stayed until 1930. In 1932 he was awarded the State Prize Medal and the professional title of Professor . In 1933 he joined the NSDAP , but left it again on June 19, 1933 after it was banned in Austria. In 1934 he joined the Popular Front . In 1937 he became President of the Vienna Artists Cooperative and President of the Permanent Delegation of Austrian Artists, and in 1938 he was elected President of the Vienna Künstlerhaus , which he chaired until 1941. He was also appointed general representative for the visual arts of the National Cultural Office of the NSDAP Austria.

Grave of Leopold Blauensteiner

In 1939 he reactivated his membership in the NSDAP and was appointed regional director of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in Vienna. He was released from that position soon after, but was reinstated as a volunteer leader. In 1944, he prevented a production facility for Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke from being built in the Künstlerhaus , and saved works of so-called Degenerate Art by artists such as Carry Hauser , Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele from destruction by having them brought to the Altaussee salt mine .

Leopold Blauensteiner lost two sons in the World War. In 1945 he was arrested on the basis of a complaint from the Russian occupation forces and later taken to the Vienna Regional Court. After a court hearing in which he was acquitted of National Socialist activities, he was released. Compensation was refused on the grounds that there was “reasonable suspicion”.

In 1947, at the age of 67, he died of heart failure in his apartment at Schottenfeldgasse 82. His grave is in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Group 32B, No. 9).

Works

Blauensteiner mainly painted landscapes and portraits, his main works include: Funeralien in Melk Abbey , The Dead Son , The Route , Symphony in Blue . Half of his oeuvre had already been sold before the Second World War. As a result of his study trips to Italy, Dalmatia, Lorraine and Germany, many landscapes were created. He sent exhibitions in Prague, Dresden, Berlin and other cities. Although he worked primarily as a painter, there are also furniture designs and designs for lattices, lanterns and other things. He also designed the meeting room of the Schlaraffia in Melk and was also busy with furnishing work for the Vienna Opera during Gustav Mahler's time as director .

Most of his pictures are privately owned. A gallery in Bern with the company name Pollak, which no longer exists, bought many pictures. But it is also represented in museums and galleries at home and abroad. His works are owned by the Vienna Belvedere , the Albertina , the Museum of the University of Applied Arts , the Vienna City Hall , the Leopold Museum in Vienna , the Rupertinum in Salzburg , the Lower Austrian State Museum in St. Pölten and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alice Proche: The painterly work of Rudolf Junk . University of Vienna, Vienna 2008, p. 13
  2. ^ Professor Blauensteiner, general representative of the cultural office. In:  Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt , April 5, 1938, p. 5 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwb
personal data
SURNAME Blauensteiner, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Melk
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1947
Place of death Vienna