Sepp Orgler

Self-portrait, 1937

Sepp Orgler (far right) as a student in the Herbert Boeckl class

Schwazer view, black chalk, around 1938

Sepp Orgler (born December 18, 1911 in Bruckhäusl, municipality of Wörgl , † March 2, 1943 near Orjol ) was an Austrian painter and sculptor .

life and work

Sepp Orgler was the youngest of five children of the Upper Bavarian cement goods manufacturer Sebastian Orgler and his wife Maria, née. Bend leather. After graduating from elementary and community school, he attended the technical school for wood sculptors at the federal college in Innsbruck from 1926 to 1929. He then worked for two years in the workshop for sacred art of the sculptor Franz Kobald in Schwaz , before he worked as a freelance sculptor and painter in Schwaz in a studio with Maria Kreidl. Most of the time, nativity scenes, small sculptures, portraits and landscapes were created.

From 1935 to 1939 Orgler studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the painting class directed by Herbert Boeckl . His fellow students included u. a. Walter Eckert , Peter Fellin , Franz Lettner and Helmut Rehm . In 1937 he received the academic study award. From 1937 onwards, encouraged by Boeckl, he turned almost exclusively to hand drawing, but occasionally also created sculptures and paintings.

In April 1940 he was called up for military service and came first to Salzburg, then to Poland, Osnabrück and France on the Marne . After Boeckl's intervention, he was able to return to the Academy in Vienna for a semester in 1940/41. Then he was used in Hamburg-Duvenstedt to guard prisoners. He had the opportunity to do artistic work. After a last home leave in Schwaz in 1942, he was sent to the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union, where he died on March 2, 1943 near Bukan, not far from Oryol , at the age of 31 . He was buried in the military cemetery near Lyudinowo .

In spite of the circumstances of the time that stood in the way of free artistic development, Orgler left behind an impressive, albeit narrow , oeuvre that was heavily indebted in its existential seriousness to the teacher Herbert Boeckl , the focus of which was on landscapes and sensitive depictions of people.

Orgler's sister Franziska (married Schleifer-Kirschl) was the mother of the painter and art writer Wilfried Kirschl (1930–2010).

literature

• Sepp Orgler. Drawings 1936-1943. Exhibition catalog, Rabalderhaus , Schwaz 1998.
• Sepp Orgler (December 18, 1911 - March 2, 1943). Exhibition for the 100th birthday. In: Heimatblätter - Schwazer Kulturzeitschrift, No. 71, 2011, pp. 4–7 ( PDF; 3 MB )

Web links

• Article in the Tyrolean daily newspaper on the occasion of the artist's 100th birthday in December 2011