Albin Egger-Lienz (1868–1926), one of the most important pioneers of Austrian Expressionism, experienced the World War as a war painter directly at the front and processed it in his works. His war pictures are considered powerful reminders against the horrors of combat and violence and are at the center of this year"s summer exhibition at Schloss Bruck, taken over from Belvedere, Vienna.
Existential questions about life and death run through the entire work of the painter Albin Egger-Lienz. Egger-Lienz"s over a decade-long engagement with the Dance of Death motif plays a central role. In 1921, Egger-Lienz completed the fifth version of the Dance of Death. Since the first time he dealt with this motif in 1906, historical upheavals had drawn deep rifts in Europe, Tyrol, and probably also in the artist"s biography. The Dance of Death stands at the beginning and the end of this development. This composition,
The exhibition Totentanz: Egger-Lienz and the War, based on the painting Totentanz by Anno Neun and numerous other works, illustrates Egger-Lienz"s artistic development and illuminates different strands of interpretation and references.
East Tyrol and its guests can look forward to an impressive show that uses a key work as an opportunity to trace Egger-Lienz"s painting development, his engagement with the war, but also the contradictory reception history of his Danse Macabre.
The “Dance of Death of Anno Neun” is not only a major work of Austrian art history at the beginning of the 20th century, but also plays an outstanding role in Egger-Lienz’s oeuvre as an artistic turning point and lifelong reference point.
„Of all Egger"s works, none has been exhibited as often or reproduced as often as the Danse Macabre in some of its versions... made the picture the epitome of his art. But Egger has never created so many new versions of any of his pictorial creations that rightly bear this name, i.e. that are not repetitions with only minor deviations” (Wilfried Kirschl)
Sunday, June 15, 2014, 11 a.m
Guided tour of the exhibition with curator Dr. Helena Perena.
The exhibition catalog (German/English)
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