OSKAR LASKE (Czernowitz 1874 - 1951 Vienna), At Wallersee

OSKAR LASKE
(Czernowitz 1874 - 1951 Vienna)
At Wallersee
gouache/paper, 42,6 x 31,2 cm
signed O. Laske and titled Am Wallersee
Provenance: private collection USA, Fine Arts Widder Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 4.000 - 6.000
START € 3.500

Austrian painter, graphic artist, book illustrator and architect of the 20th century, especially of the interwar period. Studied architecture at the Academy under Otto Wagner. Apart from a course in landscape painting with Anton Hlavacek, self-taught painter. From 1905 member of the Jungbund, from 1907 member of the Hagenbund, from 1924 in the Vienna Secession and from 1928 in the Künstlerhaus. Travels through Europe to North America. Early landscapes and cityscapes with influences of mood impressionism. Created biblical, historical and genre scenes, with a preference for narrative and multi-figure depictions. Imaginative, detailed and humorous with an expressive yet sensitive use of color.

Oskar Laske, 1874 as the eldest son of the architect Oskar Laske senior and his wife Xavera, daughter of the Czernowitz master builder Anton Fiala, first studied architecture in Vienna at the Technical University and with Otto Wagner at the Academy. After graduating, Laske began practical work in the cottage association with building director Hermann Müller, and a year later continued his architectural studies at the Academy of Fine Arts with Otto Wagner. Laske joined his father's construction company in 1901 and worked there in the field of residential building architecture, built villas and country houses in Vienna and the surrounding area as well as factories and was considered a sought-after interior decorator. However, in 1904 Laske decided to pursue an artistic career as an autodidact. In 1907 he joined the Hagenbund and in 1924 the Vienna Secession, where he was regularly represented in exhibitions. Even before the outbreak of the First World War, Laske embarked on extensive painting and study trips that took him through Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. During the war, Laske first served as an officer in Galicia and subsequently on the particularly bloody Isonzo front. Later he became a k. u. k. (“imperial and royal”, referring to the Habsburgs dual monarchy Austria-Hungary) war painter.
This watercolor belongs to the series of rural genre paintings by Laske. Such views of Laske come from the precarious years during the Second World War, also for this artist, in which Oskar Laske embarked on a kind of “inner emigration”. However, as far as circumstances allowed him, he maintained the spiritual and intellectual private circle in his house that had built up over the decades. From this time on, his extensive travel activity also decreased, and he concentrated on views of Vienna and the surrounding area, in which he remained true to his compositional idiosyncrasies.

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