Lucas Mahrenbrand
Lucas Mahrenbrand ; Bourgeois Franz Johann Kopecky (born July 17, 1911 in Vienna , † March 24, 1994 in Grünbach ) was an Austrian painter , graphic artist and draftsman .
Life
Lucas Mahrenbrand was an Austrian painter and graphic artist. He was born as Franz Johann Kopecky on July 17, 1911 in Vienna-Margareten , where he lived all his life. His parents were the paper merchant Franz Josef Kopecky and his mother Wilhelmine Auguste, née Kren.
At the age of six, shortly before the end of the First World War and the end of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy , Lucas Mahrenbrand largely lost his hearing in a cellar fall. He therefore did not enjoy school education in the traditional sense. He acquired his high level of education and his artistic skills as an autodidact .
Dependent on a large ear tube and largely cut off from everyday communication, he was already looking for drawings as a means of expression as a child. His artistic ambitions were supported by his mother, who sent him to a painting course at the adult education center in Stöbergasse when she was fourteen.
At the age of 19 he started his own business as a third generation paper wholesaler. He always saw his commercial activity as a bread-and-butter job, which should secure his livelihood and preserve the independence of his artistic development. In the interwar period he took private lessons in the studios of Josef Wawra and Franz Lerch to further his artistic training .
His deafness spared him military service in World War II . On March 19, 1942, it led to the withdrawal from service by the military district command, which was confirmed again on October 28, 1944. Lucas Mahrenbrand spent the last year of the war in the Kamptal , where he was in lively intellectual and artistic exchange with the "Kamptaler Kreis".
After the war, during which many of his works were stolen when the paper warehouse was broken into, Lucas Mahrenbrand cultivated his painting style as well as his artistic self-image and developed his own painting technique . On September 21, 1965, he was accepted into the professional association of visual artists (legitimation no. 661). The artist name was included in all official documents. Exhibitions followed in Vienna , Munich , Düsseldorf , Krems an der Donau , Bad Hofgastein and Bad Gastein . The technical innovation of hearing aids enabled him to significantly improve communication with his environment during this time.
During this period of increasing artistic recognition, he turned down a professorial title offered by the Minister of Education Theodor Piffl-Perčević as a substitute for a financial allowance for the costs of participating in the Inter-Fauna in Düsseldorf.
At the beginning of the 1970s, however, vascular diseases in both legs and two of a total of four pulmonary infarcts abruptly ended the planned further exhibition activities. Early retirement and bedridden with extremely limited mobility characterized the following two decades. Spiritual freshness and brilliance shaped this time until the death of the painter & graphic artist Lucas Mahrenbrand on March 24, 1994 during a vacation stay in Grünbach am Schneeberg. His grave is at the Döblinger Friedhof in Vienna.
plant
The oeuvre of Lucas Mahrenbrand includes a wide range of genres of painting, of portraiture , landscape graphics, nudes , still lifes and abstract painting . The continuous implementation of literary and philosophical topics, which accompanies the entire artistic development, deserves special mention.
The work can be roughly divided into two phases: one up to the mid-sixties, which was characterized by an eruptive and very physical style of painting, preferably with charcoal , brown ink and red chalk as well as intensely colored pastel painting . The second phase shows a rationally distanced artist who turns to felt pens, ballpoint pens and Japanese ink and develops his own painting technique, which he calls "white hieroglyphs". Philosophical reflections can already be found in his early work and are concentrated in the ink painting of the sixties and seventies.
Mahrenbrand created portraits not only of family members and friends, but also of well-known artists such as Richard Wagner (charcoal), Ludwig van Beethoven (charcoal) and Rembrandt van Rijn (pastel).
His pastel painting can hardly be compared among contemporaries. Mahrenbrand does not use pastel in the form of the usual hard-bound pastel pencils, but instead paints with soft organic pastel crayons he has made himself. Characteristic of these often large-format nudes and portraits is the preferred priming of the painting ground with a deep, rich Parisian blue and the graphic completion of the works with white heightening . In order to maintain the luminosity, these works were deliberately never fixed.
Travel sketches with pencil , ballpoint pen , felt pen and charcoal pens captured a rural landscape on extensive hikes that has meanwhile given way to modernity and no longer exists. In the constant struggle to optimize the graphic expression, some of them were converted into larger formats several times and with increasing abstraction. They were presented to a wider public in exhibitions in Bad Hofgastein and Bad Gastein under the motto "Walks through the Austrian landscape".
In terms of art history, the ink painting technique of the "white hieroglyphs", which he developed during a lengthy break, is the first. In his constant struggle for an ideal graphic expression, he wanted to effectively stage the color white as a graphic element without having to paint over existing colors with white paint. The result was a cut-out technique in which the white comes into its own as a graphic element. However, this already known technique did not satisfy him in connection with the means commonly used. So he created a painting base with cardboard and plastic film, which he prepared so that Japanese ink stuck to it. This opened up new possibilities for painterly expression for him and at the same time preserved the pure white of the foil as "the" graphic element. The nature of this technology mostly presupposes the existence of a finished image.
Publicly owned work (excerpt)
"The astute Junker Don Quixote von la Mancha" (1969, Japanese ink, since April 26, 1973 in the possession of the Republic of Austria (Artothek des Bundes)). This work was selected by the professional association of visual artists (BVÖ) on November 3, 1966 as part of the "campaign for the dissemination of good works of fine art", awarded the "BVÖ quality mark" by the jury and then exhibited in the gallery at the Stubenbastei .
"Migration" 1968, Japanese ink, since October 8, 1971 in the possession of the Republic of Austria (Artothek des Bundes)
Exhibitions
- 1966 Galerie auf der Stubenbastei , Vienna - "Campaign for the dissemination of good works of fine art" by the professional association of fine artists
- March 29th-1st April 1968 Inter-Fauna , 1st International Art Exhibition "In the Realm of Animals", Düsseldorf
- September 26th-11th October 1970 Exhibition of the Austrian graphic competition , Künstlerhaus-Stadtpark, Krems an der Donau
- July 19-15 August 1971 Exhibition painting - graphics - sculpture in Bad Hofgastein, honorary protection Dr. Alois Mock
- March 13th-15th March 1972 Solo exhibition graphics together with sculpture by Sepp Viehhauser, Haus Austria, Bad Gastein
- May 22-26 August 1973 Festival week exhibition 1973 "Man and the City" in the Künstlerhaus Vienna
literature
- Gastein Aktuell, July 31, 1971, page 192
- Bad-Hofgastein-Rundschau, 1971, page 11
- Salzburger Volksblatt, July 21, 1971
- Salzburger Demokratisches Volksblatt, July 21, 2971
- Gastein Aktuell, February 95, 1972, page 38
- Salzburger Volkszeitung, February 19, 1972
Individual evidence
- Catalog: 1st international art exhibition: "In the realm of animals", Düsseldorf 1968 (catalog number 248 to 255)
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mahrenbrand, Lucas |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kopecky, Franz Johann |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian painter, graphic artist and draftsman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 17, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 24, 1994 |
| Place of death | Grünbach |