December 2009

Wilhelm Bernatzik and the art of forgetting

over time

Life is fleeting. Old makes way for new. What was even more popular and well known today is forgotten tomorrow. For some, this is a hard to accepting course of history, but the wheel can not be turned back. We mere mortals are living today in one, two, maximum three generations forget again.
Forgotten Artists

It is not only happening to us this fate, also known in their time and relatively important people are gone now in the unknown part of history.
The art world is of course no exception. What was just great fashion, is a short time later as obsolete and yellow.

probably no period was followed in the successive stages as pronounced as the end of the 19th and early 20th century. The centuries old tradition of the great trained over many years of work came to an abrupt end to master the advent of modern directions in which the skills had less and less important. Great masters of brush that would be glorious, died at other times saw their life's work destroyed by the deification of Nichtskönnertum.
death and resurrection
A cinematic prime example of this is the life of the painter John William Godward . In an art world where the games a
Picasso were hailed as the mastermind, he saw no place for himself and his art and his life ended prematurely. The Art of amateurs could not suppress his fame forever. In the past decades to achieve his work and his paintings experienced a renaissance these days again impressive prices. His life is well documented and can be read free on the Web. See eg here
.
on the shaft and then forever under their
This resurgence of fame many others, is not granted. A particularly notable example, which I hereinafter would like to report, the Austrian painter Wilhelm Bernatzik. One of those lost generation, which I have mentioned elsewhere in
.
This painter was floating on the wave of the zeitgeist. He won several medals and his paintings sold well. But this is not only a historically important figure, he at the interface between Impressionism and Secession
was. Actually, he was at the right time, right place, but not even as a small cog, he has made in the history of art.

Wilhelm Bernatzik - The Funeral (1880)

Minimum Information
The few pictures and information are available on the Internet, I have all incorporated in this article. Surely not much. The problem is that his life of other minds, especially Gustav Klimt
, is overshadowed, Bernatz the posthumous oblivion sunk into the ground, from which he was not lifted until today.
embodiment of change
from art historical perspective, this is so my opinion could not be justified since it will change from a technically skilled, classically trained Akdam painter to Impressionist German-language imprint, and founder of Nouveau
(no uniform art rather a time flow) in Austria like no one embodies. A contemporary described it as a transformation from Saul (~ Academics) to Paul (~ Impressionist). I would see this of course the other way around.
Academic foundations

Be that as it may. Bernatzik had talent. And so it is not surprising that he interrupted a desired legal education to its true nature, the arts, to be heard. In Vienna and Dusseldorf, and laid the foundation in Paris, the world-famous Léon Bonnat
, one of the best portrait painters of his time, he won the final touch.
An education can only dream of today's painters. All was prepared for an impressive career and the first words of praise and medals one wobbled.

shows the two images below the extent permitted by small figures, a good academically trained fine drawing, painting and composition, which lies much hope for more.

Wilhelm Bernatzik - The Vision of Saint Bernard (1887) oil on canvas (105 x 201 cm)

Wilhelm Bernatzik - Monastery workshop

Impressionism roll

But in the background of rolling his Impressionism Railroad and was also the Austrian, who was in Paris very close contact with the beginnings of the movement, not unimpressed. The picturesque, as it was then called (I would rather say study-like), put it on. Not from a lack of alternative, but out of conviction.
German Art

And with his style of Impressionism, which he developed later, he was the German critics very well. A pant according to the latest trends from France was many a horror.
The German Reich had indeed won the war, but in artistic self-confidence was lacking even more. Where was the thought-provoking and thoughtful, which the Germans (and probably also the Austrians) then considered to be their properties?
This superficial, only the first card / Impression serving painting was perhaps the Frenchman innate, but not for German, naive, male mind fit.
Or so was the wording at that time. If even Impressionism, then the issues are serious, poetic, just German.
thinking with great titles
And this created notch Bernatzik his pictures. Not the thousandth, just beautiful lily pond acting as a kind of Monet he wanted to create. No, his pictures should have depth, and appeal to the viewer to think about bringing. This applies to 1903/1904 be painted and then imaged painting the entrance to paradise
with security.

Wilhelm Bernatzik - combined entrance to paradise (1903-1904)

Impressionist gross paint with a meaningful title.
This was more than a 'nice, beautiful to look' picture. The viewer should be about the meaning of life and think for all of us coming over. A work, as it has pleased the critics in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary determined.
Event Manager
Wilhelm Bernatzik was influenced not only artists from Impressionism, even as an organizer of the first comprehensive exhibition in the German-Impressionism, 1903 in the premises of the Vienna Secession, he created remarkable. Together with the Berlin art critic Julius Meier-Graefe
he put a show like that welcomed Impressionism doting critics at that time delighted.

This is one of the most significant exhibitions that have been held in Vienna.

is amazing the richness of the exhibition, the completeness, which is the great art evolutionary moment that characterize our era represented. were here because of the good contacts Bernatzik to France, Holland and Belgium, not just the large Heads Monet, Renoir , Sisley or Pissarro represented. More than that. The full range of Manet , Corot , Rodin, van Gogh and precursors such as Goya or Velázquez
was visible.

A renewed highlight was the 16th Secession of 17 1. to 1 3. 1903, which had been prepared by the President Wilhelm Bernatzik Travel to Amsterdam, The Hague, Brussels and Paris, and was achieved after difficult negotiations, particularly with private lenders.

Wilhelm Bernatzik - Motive from white churches on the Danube oil on canvas (50 x 80 cm)

separations and Strahlemann
could be organized this from Bernatzik only because he just this year from 1902 to 1903, Chairman of the Vienna Secession was . That the federal government, as he separated from official academia as one of the few 'old' had co-founded. This association is now usually associated with a name that outshines all others. Gustav Klimt
.
to Klimt will be slain on every corner with books, pictures and information. For him have fallen and all art lovers to the color of his Bed linen is all well known. But
Bernatzik is definitely in the book, which I've Klimt, no mention. It was a companion Bernatzik Klimt. Both participated in many exhibitions of the Secession and their specific line of travel. One line of approach, but this was not without controversy. For about eight years later, artists separated by Klimt and Bernatzik of the Vienna Secession and in 1905 founded their own little groups. Separation of the separation group also. Why not, each his own.

Wilhelm Bernatzik - Shepherd campfire - oil on canvas (95 x 73 cm)

rigor mortis lasts a long separation but not joy. For even in on it the following year, in November 1906, died in the highly respected painter in his lifetime. After a large memorial exhibition in 1907, devoted his Viennese friends to him, it quickly became quiet around Bernatzik. Since then, it brought no German / Austrian curator and art historian from the sinking
Back to the Living

Wilhelm Bernatzik - Self Portrait - Charcoal drawing

to describe his person must be already on contemporary sources draw:

He had belonged above all, enthusiasm and the brothers to the many young Viennese who made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth at the time on foot. His powerful coarse plant that allowed him, and he was later always ready for physical exertion and, in particular an avid cyclist, as such a little odd rough dress a known figure. His massive head, with the tiefgefurchten trains, had no idea that he was hiding a finely tuned brain. ( Ludwig Hevesi - Art History and Art Market)

From the same author comes a description of the influence of Impressionism and plein air painting Bernatz.

His own painting depth and soulful in the interaction of this community from year to year. His very first images revealed them and found that all buyers.
usually green, moistened images, with a glowing torrent of water and glowing purple flowers; quasi fairytale scenes. Then he threw himself into the opposite, and painted in Neunkirchen am Steinfelde the dust-dry, dusty gray twilight that proverbial for Vienna desert, but also the secluded
evening quiet of rural lanes with their solitary lanterns surrounding an iris-colored courtyard. Occasionally he rose to even to a Christmas table with winged angels. And last we saw of him for a whole Chamber, voted to yellow, with scenic panels of rosy-purple tinge, which by the way you looked at the influence of Klimtschen landscapes.

Wilhelm Bernatzik - Paradise - triptych (1904)

He was conceived without doubt in constant depression and spirituality, as one might expect

much good.
I need more details

For the statisticians last a CV, where it is absent from the amount of information available:

1853: Born on 18 May 1853 in Mistelbach (Lower Austria). Brother of constitutional law teacher Privy Councillor Prof. Dr. Edmund Bernatzik.
18xx
: Beginning of a law school in Vienna
1873 : Demolition to visit from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Eduard Peithner Lichtenfels
the special school of landscape painting
1875 : he received the Gold Medal Füger for one of his first works Cain kills his brother Abel
187x : Large image
storm off the coast of Istria
1875-1878 : Studies at the Düsseldorf Academy
, Where he painted mainly forest and wetlands
18xx : Painting fair in Lundenburg
1878 - 188x
: Studied with Leon Bonnat in Paris. Portrait and figure painting
1880 : From this year, he was a member of Wiener Künstlerhaus
to the founding of the Secession in 1897
1880 : Exhibition Artists' Association of Vienna -> drawing entitled landscape
1881 : procession in Dürnstein on the Danube
1884: The old paintings Prokop in his orchard
1885 : cycle of four seasons ( Spring - Game of the youth, summer - the sweat of hard work, autumn - Tired of the burden of life, winter - In death
), where at least the fall was later copied with slight variations
1887 : Painting The Salvation messenger
1887 : Painting The vision of healing. Bernhard in the cloister of the old pencil painted Holy Cross, which was purchased for the Imperial Gallery. There was well, maybe at the same time, be a Madonna paint monk monastery workshop painted.
1888 : Silver State Medal (where?)
1889
: Bronze medal World Expo Paris
18xx : Painting dusk, Franz Josef quay reverie
18xx : Many pictures, sketches and drawings of the environment Lund Petersburg, which he visited often, where the prince living spaces in whose castle provided was
1891
: International art exhibition Berlin Artists' Association Images: Holy Cross in Baden, Austria, on the cross-roads and The Versehgang
1893 : participation in World Expo in Chicago. Medal (which?) For his painting
Vision of St. Bernard
1894: Participation in the International Exhibition in Brussels
1894: Participation in the International Exhibition in Antwerp. Medal 2nd Class
1894: Juror at the 3rd International Art Exhibition in Vienna
189x-19xx : Pictures for the club magazine Ver Sacrum
.
1898: Exhibition 50th Anniversary in Kaiser Troppau
1898 : twilight pictures
1899:
1899 : Painting Märchensee
1899
: In the Committee of the General Assembly of the Association of Austrian Artists selected
1900
1902: Participation Secession
1902 : Painting The flame
(gorge, four blue-veiled women swear yellow blazing fire)
1903: Large-Impressionism exhibition together with Josef Engelhart
1903-1904: Painting entrance to paradise
190x : painting for the Natural History farm museum in Vienna . Gold mining in Nevada and
Vorospatak of gold mining, Transylvania.
1904: As part of the Secession, an individual, artistically furnished room. Yellow walls with purple-pink paintings.
1907: Large commemorative exhibition at the Galerie Miethke.

request

Wilhelm Bernatzik - Weiher (1900) (100 x 71 cm)

Mühlviertler Children's Games Of The Parish Perg

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Glory Hole Sacramento Straight