Wilhelm Thöny

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Photo from the 1920s by Richard Gerstenberger
new York

Wilhelm Thöny (born February 10, 1888 in Graz , Austria-Hungary , † May 1, 1949 in New York City ) was an Austrian painter , graphic artist , etcher and illustrator .

Life

Thöny first attended the State Art School in Graz, then he studied from 1908 to 1912 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , where Angelo Jank and Gabriel von Hackl were his teachers. In addition to his training as an artist, he learned singing and playing the piano. Thöny was one of the first founding members of the Munich New Secession during his studies . As a member of the Secession, he met artists like Alfred Kubin , with whom he kept in contact for a long time.

In the second year of the First World War , 1915, Thöny joined the Graz Rifle Regiment No. 3 as a one-year volunteer , attended the reserve officers' school in Mürzzuschlag in 1916 and was promoted to lieutenant on August 1, 1917 . His father's repeated request for Thönys to join the art group of the kuk war press quarter was not granted, although he worked on the work "Die Feinde Deutschlands und seine Alliedeten " (Berlin 1917), which was under the protectorate of the German emperor , and also worked on the prisoner-of-war camps in 1916 von Braunau was allowed to visit Bohemia , Kleinmünchen and Mauthausen and made portrait studies of captured Italian, Albanian, Romanian and Greek soldiers there. In 1917 Thöny was on the Italian front in the Tonale section . His often very large-scale depictions of the battles of Rifle Regiment No. 3 were partly reproduced on color postcards for the benefit of the widows and orphans fund of the regiment , some of which are now in the Graz City Museum . In 1917 Thöny also illustrated the history of his regiment, he remained a "regimental painter ", as it were, as he was at no time an official war painter in the war press headquarters . In this regard, he is often confused with his namesake Eduard Thöny , who was a member of the war press headquarters from mid-July 1914 until the end of the war.

After the war he returned to his native Graz, where he was co-founder and first president of the Graz Secession (1923). In 1925 he married Thea Herrmann-Trautner, the daughter of the American painter Frank S. Herrmann (1866–1942), sister of the painter and caricaturist Eva Herrmann . After a short stay in Paris in 1929, Thöny painted the first large oil painting " Ile de la Cité ". Fascinated by the capitals of the modern world such as Paris or New York , he left his hometown Graz and spent the years 1931 to 1938 in Paris, where his style changed significantly. Every year he spent the autumn on the Côte d'Azur , where the most important works of this creative period were created. In the summer of 1933 Thöny went to Manhattan for the first time . Under this impression, he then painted numerous oil paintings and watercolors with New York motifs in Paris . In 1929, 1935 and 1936 he participated with works in the exhibitions of the Prague Secession . Thöny was awarded the gold medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1937 . In 1938 Thöny finally moved to New York with his Jewish wife Thea, from where he organized numerous exhibitions in the USA , but also suffered from isolation as a European.

On March 4, 1948, a fire in a warehouse in New York destroyed over a thousand of his prints and paintings, which were to be shown in a large collective exhibition. With that almost all of his life's work was lost. He did not recover from this stroke of fate until his death in 1949. Thea Thöny looked after the estate.

In 1976, Thönygasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him. In the Wetzelsdorf district of Graz , Wilhelm-Thöny-Weg was named after him.

plant

Thöny was a loner as a person and as an artist. He did not feel obliged to any art direction, which is expressed in the diverse techniques and content of his works. Especially in his time in Graz, themes such as loneliness and cold dominate his pictures. He was inspired on the one hand by the tranquility of the Styrian landscapes, on the other hand by the hustle and bustle of the big cities of Paris and New York . But the impressions of his work at the front in the First World War also run through his entire work.

Thöny's oil paintings, which he created during his time in France, appear light, similar to watercolors. From the southern French coast in Toulon , Bandol , Sanary-sur-Mer or Marseille , Thöny immortalized the light and color of the early autumn days in some works. His love was more for the simple motifs, such as the quiet gardens, an old harbor, the branch of the fruit tree or the tower of a cathedral. The looseness of the color, which is freed from all descriptive function, the rhythm in the composition of the picture, the objects shortened to a cipher determine the uniqueness of these works.

Collections of his works can be found in the Neue Galerie Graz , the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere and the Army History Museum in Vienna .

Exhibitions (excerpt)

Works (excerpt)

painting

  • Soldiers at the Campfire (1917), oil on canvas, 80.5 × 60 cm, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna
  • Infantry attack (1915), oil on canvas, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna
  • Encounter (around 1925)
  • Schoolyard (1926/27)
  • Mondnacht am Murufer in Graz (1928), oil on canvas, 80 × 100 cm, Belvedere, Vienna
  • Encounter (around 1935)
  • New York (around 1935)
  • Fête au bois 1890 (1935)
  • New York by night (around 1936), watercolor on paper, 48 × 65 cm, Albertina, Vienna
  • Portrait of Cardinal Verdier (1937)
  • Double portrait (around 1942)

drawings

  • But the raven parents feast (around 1928)
  • Parisian summer fashion (around 1935)

Autobiography

  • ... with y (published posthumously 1953)

Illustrated books

  • Fyodor M. Dostojewski : The young woman. With etchings by Wilhelm Thöny . Kurt Wolff, Leipzig 1918.
  • Andreas Schreiber: The Oddities of Lord Nightingale. With six etchings by W. Thöny (1920)
  • Hugo Daffner : Salome. Your figure in history and art, poetry - visual arts - music. Hugo Schmidt, Munich 1912. With an original etching by Wilhelm Thöny.

literature

  • Neue Galerie Graz (Ed.): Wilhelm Thöny. In the wake of modernity. Exhibition catalog for the exhibition of the same name, May 24 to September 22, 2013, Graz 2013, ISBN 978-3-86678-796-4 .
  • Wieland Schmied : Wilhelm Thöny. Portrait of a loner. Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg 1976.
  • Otto Breicha : Wilhelm Thöny. His work in the Rupertinum. Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg 1997, ISBN 3-85349-216-9 .
  • Otto Breicha: Wilhelm Thöny's red chalk drawings for the “French Revolution” from the collection of the Albertina graphic arts collection, Vienna. Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg 1988, ISBN 3-85349-120-0 (facsimile reproductions of 30 red chalk drawings).
  • Liselotte Popelka: From "Hurray" to the corpse field. Paintings from the war picture collection 1914–1918. Army History Museum, Vienna 1981.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Liselotte Popelka: From "Hurray" to the corpse field. Paintings from the war picture collection 1914–1918 , p. 46.
  2. ^ Wieland Schmied: Wilhelm Thöny. Portrait of a loner , p. 5 f.
  3. ↑ Torn from oblivion on orf.at, accessed on May 27, 2013

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thöny, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1949
Place of death New York City