Karl Mader, Fürstenfeld (Steiermark)1884-1952 Graz
"Abend" ["Evening"] (Death and its Companions)
etching
23,7 × 29,6 cm
circa 1910-1920
in pencil below left titled ("Abend") and below right signed ("Karl Mader")
Magnificent, strong, expressive print with a wide margin. Smaller tears or blemishes, as well as somewhat stained, in the white margin, otherwise in excellent condition.
"Austrian artist Karl Mader spent "[f]our years of study at the Graz School of Applied Arts, initially sculpture, then painting with A. Schrötter, and in 1902/03 at the Vienna School of Applied Arts with [Alfred] Roller and at the Munich Academy with L. Herterich. Further training with [Ferdinand] Hodler in Geneva and then at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1900, he returned to his birthplace, Fürstenfeld, where he taught at the Staatsrealschule from 1909–20. He then taught at the Graz Kunstgewerbeschule from 1920–24. And after giving up that position, he lived as a freelance artist in Graz. From 1924, Mader was a member of the Styrian Artists' Cooperative and the Artists' Union of Graz, and, from 1935, a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. From around 1932, Mader, under the influence of Hodler and Egger Lienz, took up monumental figurative painting. Expansively conceived paintings were created in which monumentality appears paired with philosophical tendencies. " Michaela Pappernigg, ed., Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bestandskatalog der Österreichischen Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 3: L–R (Vienna: Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere, 1997), pg. 55 (English translation of this excerpt by Jack Daulton).
