Walther Gross

This article deals with the painter Walther Gross. For other people see Walter Groß .

People on Shelf III , 1987

Walther Gross (born April 6, 1920 in Vienna ; † September 26, 2014 in Zwettl ) was an Austrian visual artist . He was best known for those pictures in which he captured the impressions of his captivity in the Soviet Union .

life and work

From 1930 to 1938 Walther Gross attended the Beethoven Realschule in Vienna, his drawing teachers were the academic painters Fritz Jäger and Robert Sedlatschek. In 1933, Gross also took lessons from Franz Cizek , the founder of “creative children's drawing”.

At the age of twenty Walther Gross came to the Eastern Front as a soldier in the Waffen SS , where he was taken prisoner of war. On December 27, 1949, he was sentenced to 25 years in a labor reform camp. (This judgment was not overturned until June 11, 1992, and the proceedings were discontinued due to the fact that there were no facts). After Stalin's death he was allowed to return home on October 15, 1953. He tried to resume his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts , but failed due to lack of resources. He then worked in industry, in 1957 he joined the Austrian Armed Forces , from where he retired as a brigadier in 1981 .

It was not until the beginning of the 1970s that Gross, under the influence of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story Ein Tag des Iwan Denisovitsch , began to deal again with his war experiences and his imprisonment and began to paint these impressions. His preferred medium is oil painting on hardboard ; his style shows influences from Art Nouveau and Expressionism . The suffering person is at the center of his art . Several works by Walther Gross are now in the collections of the Vienna Army History Museum .

Walter Gross had been married since 1943 and had three children. He lived in Zwettl for his last years and was a frequent guest in television documentaries about the Second World War , especially on the subject of prisoners of war and returnees.

Exhibitions

• 1992: Special exhibition in the Army History Museum, Vienna
• 1994: Museum Lauriacum , Enns
• 1994: Gallery in the Stadttheater, Steyr
• 1995: Castle in Wiener Neustadt
• 1995: People after the war , Schallaburg
• 1998: You can't see those in the dark - prisoners of war in Russia , pillared hall of the Salzburg town hall
• 1999: Old Fire House, Bad Reichenhall
• 2006: Allentsteig Castle

Works

• People on the shelf III. 1987, oil on hardboard, approx. 65 x 85 cm, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna.
• Labor Committee. Oil on hardboard, 38 × 53 cm
• In the oil shale. Oil on hardboard, 38 × 40 cm
• Dystrophy. Oil on hardboard, 78 × 38 cm

literature

• Ernst Wachalovsky, Inge Lovcik (ed.): Pictures break a taboo: Walther Gross, the painter of the prisoner of war. Stocker, Graz 2001, ISBN 3-7020-0930-2 .
• Andreas Biere (ed.): A war volunteer and late returnee reports . Riesa 2012, ISBN 978-3-9814347-5-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Walther Gross in the catalog of the German National Library
• Walther Gross' website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography on grosswalther.at, accessed on April 4, 2012.
2. ↑ Brief description on Versandbuchhandelscriptorium.com, accessed on April 4, 2012.
3. ^ "Homecoming": Last part of the four-part contemporary history "Captive of War" ( memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on orf.at, accessed April 4, 2012. 
4. ^ Website of the Officer's Society Salzburg ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 4, 2012.