OSKAR LASKE (Czernowitz 1874 - 1951 Vienna), Johann Sebastian Bach, 1938

OSKAR LASKE
(Czernowitz 1874 - 1951 Vienna)
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1938
gouache/paper, 13 x 10,8 cm
signed Laske, dated 22. Oktober 1938 Nisselgasse and titled J.S. Bach
depicted in Hagenbund, Vienna 2019, p. 44, N. 101
Provenance: private collection Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 500 - 800
START € 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 infusions of atmospheric Impressionism. Created biblical, historical and genre scenes, with a preference for narrative and multi-figure representations. 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.
In Oskar Laske's rich oeuvre there are countless dedication sheets in which he practices the art of "cheerful finger exercise". Most of these small-format occasional graphics are watercolours, ink or pencil drawings, in which Laske presents figures from his cheerful and whimsical menagerie, who act as bearers of holiday or birthday greetings or invitations, or are intended to edify and amuse the addressee. Hans Tietze, who was a friend of Laske's, recognized very early on that Laske's funny ideas make us laugh and that "the painter could be considered a mere jester. (...) His humor is the fruit of a serious view of life, his inexhaustible joy in storytelling the result of intense mass psychology.”

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