Leopold Forstner

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Leopold Forstner (born November 2, 1878 in Leonfelden , Upper Austria ; † November 5, 1936 in Stockerau ) was a material artist of the Viennese Art Nouveau , who in particular helped the mosaic technique to a renaissance.

Life

Forstner was born as the only son of the carpenter Franz Forstner and his wife Anna, geb. Kogseder, born. He attended elementary school in Leonfelden and then the Kaiser-Franz-Josef Citizens' School and State Crafts School in Linz. Supported by his spiritual uncle Anton Forstner, he served an apprenticeship in the Tyrolean Glasmalerei- and mosaic hospital in Innsbruck and studied from 1899 at the Imperial School of Applied Arts of the Imperial Austrian Museum of Art and Industry , where he by Karl Karger and his later mentor Koloman Moser taught has been. Following this, Forstner studied from 1902 to 1903 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Ludwig von Herterich .

From 1901 Leopold Forstner worked as a draftsman, painter, illustrator and book graphic artist. In 1906 he founded the "Vienna Mosaic Workshop". Two years later, Forstner received the trade license for the production of glass mosaics for his first workshop in Vienna 9th, Althanplatz 6 (today Julius-Tandler-Platz). In 1908, at the suggestion of Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann, the Vienna Art Show took place, at which Forstner was able to present himself to a wide audience for the first time with several works. In 1909 he was represented there as well as in 1911 at the spring exhibition of the Hagenbund .

Forstner made his first mosaics using traditional Venetian or Florentine techniques. But he became known for his combined mosaics and later for the plate mosaics, such as. B. the Klimt frieze in the Stoclet Palace . Some of the designs for his works came from his own hand, but Forstner also worked with important contemporary artists such as Otto Wagner , Otto Schönthal , Emil Hoppe and Gustav Klimt.

In the following years until the outbreak of the First World War, Forstner created the most important works of his creative period and enlarged his workshop, which moved to Vienna 20, Pappenheimgasse 39. In 1912 he became a member of the Association of Austrian Artists and founded the company “Wiener Friedhofskunst” together with the architect Cesar Poppovits and the painter Alfred Basel. In the same year he also had his own glass furnace built and founded the “Mosaik-Glashütte” in Stockerau in the area of ​​the former “Reiterkaserne” in Schaumanngasse 3. In 1913 he was accepted as an extraordinary member of the Society of Austrian Architects.

In 1911 he married Stephanie Stöger, who came from Stockerau and with whom he had two children, Georg (* 1912) and Karl (* 1913).

After the end of the First World War, in which Forstner served as a collection officer in Albania and Macedonia, he moved to Stockerau, his wife's hometown, where in 1919 he opened the workshop for the production of precious glass, the “Edelglas-, Mosaik- u. Emailwerkstätte ”and in 1920 founded the“ Edelglaswerke AG ”for hollow glass , which he soon had to sell again and was continued by the Fickl family from 1925 until it was closed in 1937.

Because of the poor economic situation after the end of the war, Forstner was artistically very versatile in the following years, with the design and execution of monuments, as an architect and landscape planner and from 1929-36 as a drawing teacher at the Hollabrunn high school.

His grave is in the Stockerau cemetery.

plant

Church at the Steinhof with the high altar mosaic
Mosaic above the entrance of the house at Frankenberggasse 3 in Vienna 4
Small kuk coat of arms for the Vienna hunting exhibition in 1910
Detail of one of the mosaics in Dianabad
  • Glass window for the Vienna Post Savings Bank ; 1904-06
  • Memorial plaque for WA Mozart for the house at Klosterstrasse 20, Linz; 1906.
  • St. Georg and St. Hubertus, Venetian mosaics, exhibited at the 1908 art show.
  • Apse mosaic for the Ebelsberg parish church in Linz with a relief by the ceramicist Wilhelm Bormann ; 1908.
  • Mosaic with relief figures "Spring" in the Grand Salon of the Grand Hotel Wiesler in Graz .
  • Mosaic of the small coat of arms of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy for the Vienna hunting exhibition; together with Györgyfaloy, 1910.
  • Glass windows and wall mosaics in the entrance areas to the side chapels as well as the representation of the four evangelists in the dome pendentifs for the cemetery church of St. Karl Borromeo at the Vienna Central Cemetery; 1911.
  • Execution of the mosaic frieze based on a design by Gustav Klimt for the dining room of the Stoclet Palace in Brussels; 1909-11.
  • Glass windows based on designs by Koloman Moser and the high altar mosaic "The Promise of Heaven" based on designs by Carl Ederer, Remigius Geyling and Rudolf Jettmar for the Steinhof Church in Vienna; 1906-12.
  • Second villa by Otto Wagner, Vienna 14; 1912/13.
  • Mosaics for the entrance hall of the old Viennese Diana bath ; 1914.
  • Mosaic “St. Georg ”for the Stockerau church tower ; 1914–16, (removed in 1937; restored in 1989 and since then placed in the chapel of the Stockerau hospital).
  • Dragoon war memorial in the church park of Stockerau; 1926.
  • New construction of the Stockerau city park; 1928.
  • Memorial to the fallen soldiers of the First World War in the Stockerau grammar school; 1930.
  • Stained glass of the "Gertrude window" in the Währingen parish church ; 1934
Further work in Vienna
  • Hotels: Astoria, Regina
  • Coffee houses: Palace, Sacher
  • Department stores: Gerngross
  • Residential buildings: Frankenberggasse 3
  • Fabric samples for Joh. Backhausen & Sons
  • Glass windows with landscapes, flowers and birds etc. in staircases for numerous residential buildings in Vienna, etc. a .:
    • Vienna 3, Blumgasse 6
    • Vienna 3, Esteplatz 4
    • Vienna 6, Linke Wienzeile 48–52 (House of the Insurance Company of the Austrian Federal Railways)
    • Vienna 7, Kaiserstraße 86
    • Vienna 7, Neubaugasse 38
    • Vienna 7, Siebensterngasse 44
    • Vienna 7, Westbahnstraße 26
    • Vienna 15, Hütteldorfer Strasse 24
    • Vienna 19, Nedergasse 12
    • Vienna 19, Obkirchergasse 41
Other work

Appreciation

In Hollabrunn, Forstnergasse was named after him.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert Fürnkranz: Spiegel einer Stadt: Street names in Hollabrunn (PDF) 2002, accessed on April 4, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Leopold Forstner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Forstner, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian art nouveau mosaic and glass artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Leonfelden
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1936
Place of death Stockerau