KARL STARK (Glojach 1921 - 2011 Klosterneuburg), Still Life with Fruits

KARL STARK*
(Glojach 1921 - 2011 Klosterneuburg)
Still Life with Fruits
oil/chipboard, 45,5 x 60 cm
signed K. Stark and dated 1957
Provenance: auction house Kinsky Vienna 2020, private collection Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 3.000 - 6.000
START € 3.000

Austrian painter of the 20th century. Was born in Czernowitz/Buwokina, studied from 1926 to 1931 at the Academy of Fine Arts with Ferdinand Andri and Karl Fahringer. In 1946 co-founder of the artist group Der Kreis, from 1958 member of the Vienna Secession. Works of the interwar period stylistically to Expressionism, influences of Richard Gerstl and Edvard Munch. From the 1940s, he turned to representational abstraction and later to the influences of Cubism and Surrealism, in the circle of Edgar Jené. Painted mainly portraits, landscapes and still lifes. Influenced by Paul Cezanne, in his late work he dealt with Tachism. 1979 exhibition at the Austrian Gallery Belvedere.

This still life by the Czernowitz-born painter and graphic artist Gustav Hessing, with its subdued colouring, combines the typical characteristics of his painting style: Paul Cézanne and Amedeo Modigliani had a particular influence on Hessing's style and had become a necessary foundation for him. Only hesitantly did he put colour to canvas, as finding and combining the right subtle tonal gradations was a priority for him and usually the subject of long deliberations. In any case, Hessing had generally avoided going public with his pictorial creations too quickly. While in his earlier years he still primarily used colour in a more fluid manner, here he prefers a meticulously composed colour mosaic, to which the components of this still life - a table with a bowl full of fruit and a pale female torso at the right edge of the picture - are subordinated in such a way that undoubted identification seems almost impossible. Hessing studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1926 to 1931 under Ferdinand Andri, who was devoted to Heimatkunst throughout his life, and the animal painter Carl Fahringer, who created in a late Impressionist-Expressionist mixed style. Apart from a solid training in painting technique, Hessing obviously did not receive any further impulses to consolidate his own personal style. After he began painting as a freelance artist in 1932, he was banned by the National Socialists from 1938 from both painting and exhibiting. During the war, Hessing was to lose everything: not only his homeland, which became part of the Soviet Union, but also his mother and many other family members, who were murdered. Through expropriation, he also lost his fortune in one fell swoop. Although registered as an opponent of the regime by the Gestapo, he remained in Vienna as a submarine, where he was able to survive the war years thanks to the help of friends. After the end of the war, he co-founded the artists' association "Der Kreis" in 1946 and joined the Secession as a member between 1958 and 1960 and from 1969. In his late work, he was primarily concerned with the Tachisme movement and created mainly watercolours.

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The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° in the catalog), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13% is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.