Lot 44: ANTON KOLIG (Neutitschein 1886 - 1950 Nötsch)

ANTON KOLIG
(Neutitschein 1886 - 1950 Nötsch)
Lying male Nude
pencil/paper, 44,9 x 35,2 cm
dated 19.5.
Provenance: private property Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 3.000 - 5.000

Austrian painter of expressionism, color expressionism and late expressionism of the 20th century. Originated from Neutitschein in Moravia, from 1904 in Vienna. Studied with Oskar Kokoschka at the School of Arts and Crafts, moved to the Academy of Fine Arts to Heinrich Lefler, Rudolf Bacher and Alois Delug. There he met Sebastian Isepp and Franz Wiegele, and with Isepp he frequented the salons of Eugenie Schwarzwald and Berta Zuckerkandl. Founded the Neukunstgruppe in 1909 with Egon Schiele, Albert Paris Gürtersloh, Anton Faistauer and Franz Wiegele. Married Franz Wiegele's sister in 1912. Showed his works for the first time together with Oskar Kokoschka, Anton Faistauer, Sebastian Isepp and Frnaz Wiegele at the Hagenbund exhibition in 1911. On the recommendation of Gustav Klimt and Carl Moll scholarship for Paris. As a war painter in the First World War. Created tapestries and mosaics for the Festspielhaus in Salzburg and frescoes for the Landhaus in Klagenfurt in the 1920s. Together with Sebastian Isepp, Anton Mahringer and Franz Wiegele in the artists' group Nötscher Kreis with its domicile in Nötsch in the Gail Valley in Carinthia. From 1928 professor at the Academy in Stuttgart, member of the Prague Secession.

Born as the son of an interior and church painter from Neutitschein in northern Moravia, Anton Kolig received his artistic training in Vienna at both the School of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts. Franz Wiegele and Sebastian Isepp, both from Nötsch im Gailtal, were soon among the most important acquaintances of the young Kolig, who developed a particularly enthusiasm for them. This fascination with the virile also characterized Kolig's relationship to his male nude models in the years that followed. After the end of the First World War, Kolig settled in Nötsch, where countless male nudes were created between 1918 and 1928, just as his graphic work is almost exclusively dedicated to male nude drawings. More than a thousand such sheets are known today. In his letters, too, he mentions drawing a lot. During his professorship in Stuttgart from 1928 to 1943, he had countless models at his disposal, which he recorded in rarely dated drawings. He partially destroyed them again, as he wrote to his friend, the art historian Bruno Grimschitz, on June 27, 1947: Rage in the studio today - mountains of drawings burned. In Koligs Stuttgart period his works are marked by clear contours and accuracy in these nude drawings. He studies his models from an oblique top view, whereby the gaze leads from the foot upwards over the flaccid genitals and the modeling of the male upper body to the head design. Only a few lines of construction and perspective run through the composition. This certainty in the reproduction of the body language details and the modeling is astounding in view of the necessary foreshortening and overlapping perspectives. In addition, the drawing does not reveal any struggle for the line and the form: everything seems captured at lightning speed. We now know that Kolig also used photos as a tool to fix poses that were difficult to assume and maintain. This made it easier for him to study the movement and the pause of the models, which he described as yearning or melancholy and thoughtful youths, in more detail.

PLEASE NOTE:
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.