RICHARD RHODA - Key Persons
Alfons Walde (1891, Oberndorf in Tirol, 1958, Kitzbühel, Austria) was an architect, graphic designer and publisher who gained even greater fame as a painter of Expressionist Tyrolian winter alpine views. Walde was a son of the teacher Franz Walde and Maria Walde (b. Ritzer). In 1892 the family moved to Kitzbuhel, where Alfon's father was headmaster. From 1903, he attended secondary school in Innsbruck, where he graduated in 1910 with honors. At this school he first showed his artistic skills in the form of watercolor - and tempera paintings. Walde developed his own unique style focusing on people and their houses in high mountain regions, earning him a place among the so-called "magic realists".
Walde began to study architecture at the Vienna University of Technology in 1910. A friend of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, Walde interacted with artists of the Vienna Secession and this avant-garde movement greatly influenced the composition and the themes of Walde's early paintings.
He first exhibited his artwork in Tyrol in 1911, and later in 1913 at the building of the Vienna Secession. After the war, Walde returned to his native Kitzbühel, but remained in contact with Vienna through regular exhibitions and art competitions. Between 1914 and 1918 he enlisted and served in the army. Upon return, Walde attended the Technical University of Vienna for the summer semester of 1918 and cofounded the "Chamber of Artists" with artist Albin Egger-Lienz. In 1920, he has his first exhibition with Vienna Secession and in 1924 was awarded first and second prize in a competition of the Tyrolian Traffic Office (theme: winter landscapes). In 1925 he married Hilda Lackner from Kitzbühel. In the same year took part in the Biennale Romana in Rome and was awarded the Julius Reich artists Foundation Prize.
In 1927, Walde was appointed chief architect in project planning and development for the cable car stations in Kitzbuhel and Hahnenkamm. In 1928, Walde was awarded first prize (shared with Painter Rudolf Stolz, from Bolzano, Italy) in a renewed competition to perform commissioned work for the train station in Innsbruck. As Walde became more and more successful as an artist, he founded his own printing company which mass-produce prints of his paintings resulting in a number of forgery cases in the 1930's. From then on, he printed his pictures at his own publishing shop as posters and postcards and marketed them among the general public. In 1930, after divorcing his first wife, he married Lilly Walter and fathered a daughter and designed his first official Tyrol poster. In 1940 he married for the third time.
From 1946, he dedicated himself to his work on architectural projects and in 1956, on Walde's 65th Birthday he was awarded the title of full professor . In December of 1958, after suffering for years with heart problems, Walde had a heart attack and died.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880, Aschaffenburg, Bavaria-1938, Davos, Switzerland ) was the son of an engineer in a Dresden paper plant. In 1901 he began to study architecture at the Technische Hochschule (technical school) in Dresden. He continued his studies in Munich from 1903/04 and finished his degree back in Dresden in 1905. Together with his fellow students Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl, Kirchner founded the artists' association "Brücke" in June 1905 and hencefoth comitted himself to painting, drawing and printing. In 1906 he met Doris Große, who became his favourite model until 1911. He spent the summers between 1907 and 1911 in Goppeln, at the lakes of Moritzburg and on the island of Fehmarn with various members of the "Brücke". In his work he focused on the female nude in nature, expressed in strong and impulsive images.
He moved to Berlin in 1911 and founded the MUIM-Institut with Max Pechstein, in order to pass-on new artistic convictions and demands through "Moderner Unterricht im Malen" (modern teaching of painting). This private art school was closed in 1912 due to a lack of viability. In 1912 Kirchner also met Erna Schilling who remained his commited partner until his death. Until 1914 he returned regularly painting to island of Fehmarn to paint. In 1913 Kirchner wrote the "Chronik der Brücke" (chronicle of the "Brücke"), which caused the association's break-up. His first exhibition as an individual artist at the Folkwang Museum in Essen established his work as a part of the contemporary artistic scene.
Between 1913 and 1915 Kirchner painted a famous series of depictions of the metropole (Großstadtbilder), in which he captured the pulsating life of modern Berlin in hectic brushstrokes. In 1914 Kirchner voluntarily joined the military service. Following a nervous breakdown Kirchner was released from the army at the end of 1915, and from 1916 to 1917 he recovered in the sanatoriums of Taunus and Davos, Switzerland.
In 1918 Kirchner moved to Davos permanently, lived in a farm house in the Alps and mainly focused on the depiction of mountain scenery until the end of his life. Various exhibitions in 1920 introduced his work to a wider public in Germany and Switzerland. Kirchner moved to Frauenkirch-Wildboden in 1923. A substantial exhibition of his work shown at the art gallery in Basel prompted the Swiss painters Paul Camenisch, Albert Müller and Hermann Scherer to found the artists' association "Rot-Blau" (red and blue). In 1925/26 Kirchner undertook a final trip to Germany.
The later 1920s were characterized by artistic success: the first monograph was published in 1926 as was the first part of a catalogue raisonne of his graphic work. In Davos an extensive exhibition was staged. A commission for murals in the Folkwang Museum followed in 1927 and in 1928 Kirchner took part in the Biennale in Venice. In 1931 he became a member of the Prussion Academy of Arts. The Nazis defamed his work as "degenerate" in 1937 and confiscated all of his paintings which were on display in public museums. Kirchner committed suicide on 15th July 1938.
Franz Xavier Petter (1791, Vienna-1866, Vienna) Franz Xaver Petter was the son of Jacob Petter, an Austrian court servant and porcelain painter. In 1809 the young Petter became the pupil of Johann Baptist Drechsler and Sebastian Wegmayr at the Vienna Academy and in 1814 he succeeded Drechlser as Instructor at the Academy's School of Botanical Drawing . In 1835 he became the school's principal.
From 1816 Petter started exhibiting his works regularly, first at the Academy's exhibitions and later at the Austrian Art Association. Themes such as still life, fruit and flower paintings dominated his artistic output. Many of Petter's paintings are characterized by a formality of composition and a baroque flamboyance, which harks back to the paintings of the great Dutch masters which make use of the baroque repertoire of vases and niches. But, like his master Drechsler, Petter could also paint in a much less formal and more naturalistic style.