Aloys Zötl, 1803 Freistadt/ Oberösterreich – 1887 Eferding

THISTLE WITH DRAGONFLY, LIZARD, SNAIL AND BUTTERFLY Watercolor on paper. Visible dimensions: 19 x 29 cm. Signed "A. Zötl. fecit" lower right. In passepartout, framed behind glass. A thistle lying in a slightly diagonal space evoked by shading, with a dragonfly sitting on it. Surrounded by a snail shell together with a lizard, whose attention, like that of the dragonfly, is focused on an approaching fly. On the upper right a butterfly. The artist Aloys Zötl started out as a master dyer, but devoted himself to creating an encyclopaedic bestiary with fantastic watercolors of animals. His work was rediscovered decades after his death and was described by André Breton (1896-1966) as the most magnificent animal book the world had ever seen. Alongside Henri Rousseau, Zötl was included by Breton in the list of "surrealists avant la lettre". This makes Zötl the only officially recognized surrealist that Austria has produced. Literature: See Franz Reitinger, Aloys Zötl oder die Animalisierung der Kunst. How a dyer of the Danube Monarchy became a surrealist. Vienna 2004 (1400341) (13)