ALFRED HRDLICKA* (Wien 1928 - 2009 Wien)

ALFRED HRDLICKA* (Vienna 1928 - 2009 Vienna) Kiss of death, 1970 etching/copperplate engraving cardboard, 39 x 49,6 cm signed Hrdlicka, dated 1970, numbered 24/99 ESTIMATE °€ 200 - 300 STARTING PRICE °€ 200 Alfred Hrdlicka was an Austrian sculptor, painter, draftsman, graphic artist, chess player and writer. A cousin of his is the Munich jazz musician Franz “Litschie” Hrdlička. Powerlessness in history and the present, in war, violence and fascism, are favorite themes of his artistic works, in which he did not follow the general tendency towards abstraction, but rather constantly developed his own figurative-expressive style, which remained fundamentally committed to realism. Hrdlicka studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, with Albert Paris Gütersloh and Josef Dobrowsky. He then switched to sculpture at the academy with Fritz Wotruba. From 1955, Hrdlicka ran a lithographic workshop in Vienna with Georg Eisler, Fritz Martinz and Rudolf Schönwald. With Martinz he had his first exhibition “Sculpture, Painting and Graphics” in the Zedlitzhalle in Vienna in 1960. He became internationally known in 1964 when, together with Herbert Boeckl, he represented Austria at the 32nd Venice Biennale. In 1967 he made a bust of Federal President Karl Renner for the city of Vienna. Their installation was accompanied by angry protests from the “League Against Degenerate Art”. Hrdlicka was a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, the University of the Arts in Berlin and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Important Stuttgart students included Manfred Bercher, Herbert A. Böhm, Heinz Dress, Gabriele Gebele, Elisabeth Habenicht, Joachim von Heimburg, Fritz Gerd Hoffmann, Susanne Knorr, Bert Mahringer, Cornelia Rühlicke, Hans Daniel Sailer, Manfred Bercher, Herbert A. Böhm , Susanne Knorr, Felix Sommer, Reinhard Bombsch, Herbert Göser, Ursula Kärcher, Alfons Koller, Angela Laich, Chu Hwan Lim, Birgit Müller, Markus Rapp, Joachim Sauter, Johann Schickinger, Michael Schützenberger, Eva-Maria Schwarz, Helmut Stowasser, Kurt Tassotti, Mehmet Yagur, Gerhard Zirkelbach, Dietrich Klinge and Markus Matthias Rapp. As a graphic artist, Hrdlicka became interested in the etching cycle “Roll over Mondrian” in the mid-1960s, in which he formally dealt with Piet Mondrian. In Berlin he created the Plötzensee Dance of Death for the memorial to the Nazi victims. In Wuppertal he erected a sculpture by Friedrich Engels (“The Strong Left”). Hrdlicka himself described the memorial against war and fascism unveiled on Albertinaplatz in Vienna as his most important work. Hrdlicka was friends with the German socialist Oskar Lafontaine. Together with Peter Turrini and Manfred Deix, he created a meter-high horse during the Waldheim affair in 1986. 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 °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographs 20%, 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.