TRUDE WAEHNER (Vienna 1900 - 1979 Vienna), Otto Klemperer conducting

TRUDE WAEHNER*
(Vienna 1900 - 1979 Vienna)
Otto Klemperer conducting
woodcut/paper, 27,7 x 20,6 cm, sheet size 53,3 x 33 cm
signed Waehner and inscribed Klemperer dirige, dal ciclo "Fare e Sentire Musica", Prova d'Autore 1973
Provenance: estate of the artist, Gustav Szekely collection, Fine Arts Widder

ESTIMATE °€ 200 - 300
START € 200

Austrian painter of the 20th century. Studied for two years at the Academy of Music, then at the Vienna School of Applied Arts with Oskar Strnad and Josef Frank. From 1928 on the recommendation of Walter Gropius and mediation of Josef Frank at the Bauhaus in Dessau in the class of Paul Klee. Attended courses by Wassily Kandinsky. Went to Berlin in 1932, contact with Bruno Cassirer and contact with Bert Brecht, Otto Dix, Klaus and Erika Mann. In 1933 she went back to Vienna and and fled after the Anschluss in 1938 via Switzerland, France, England to the USA. Her studio in Buchfeldgasse in Vienna was taken over by Heimito von Doderer, and Albert Paris Gütersloh lived there as a lodger. Always critical of anti-Semitism and fascism, her second husband was of Jewish origin. In the U.S. she taught art at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and at the Moravian Seminary and College for Women in Pennsylvania. After the war, she lived in Vienna, southern Sicily (Dieulefit) and Venice. 1937 personale at the Würthle Gallery, member of the Austrian Werkbund. Began to make more woodcuts in Venice, many portraits of musicians, cellists, composers and conductors.

Along with Helene Funke and Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag, Trude Waehner, who came from an upper-class Viennese family, is one of the influential, long-overlooked Viennese artists who had to emigrate and thus ran the risk of being disconnected from the art scene. From 1918 on, she studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, only to get to the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1928 through the mediation of Josef Frank. There she entered Paul Klee's painting class and also took courses with Wassily Kandinsky. When the famous Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer offered her an exhibition in 1933, this was thwarted by the political upheaval and her Berlin studio was destroyed by the Gestapo. As a result, the artist not only clearly pointed out the dangers of fascism in her works, but also actively helped with the production of identity papers and supported others fleeing Vienna. As an attentive observer of social and political developments, Waehner designed anti-fascist graphics as early as the late 1920s. From the 1930s onwards, her artistic work repeatedly referred to the political situation, from which she unequivocally distanced herself. The artist, who had returned to Austria in 1933, was prevented from exhibiting due to her political commitment and her anti-fascist views. In 1938 she emigrated to New York. As a result of networking with other emigrants and the contacts she had made with Americans in recent years, she soon found a living through private painting lessons. With letters of recommendation from Josef Frank, Hans Tietze and Oskar Kokoschka, Waehner also received two teaching positions at schools in the USA and began to work in the field of art psychology. Her artistic work in these years was mainly characterized by portraits and cityscapes.

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