197 - Albert Birkle* (Berlin 1900 - 1986 Salzburg)

Albert Birkle* (Berlin 1900 - 1986 Salzburg) Spring, around 1925 oil/cardboard 89 x 74 cm signed A. Birkle SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 10000 - 20000 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 10000 Albert Birkle, a German painter and draftsman, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter and studied at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1920 to 1925, where he became a master student of Arthur Kampf. He developed a religiously influenced, socially critical realism with formal aesthetic elements reminiscent of New Objectivity, situated between Expressionism and New Objectivity and often exaggerating into the fantastical – especially in his character studies with caricatured features and a direct reference to the Christian Passion, comparable to the expressive portraiture of Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth. In 1921, he became the youngest member of the Berlin Secession, and later also of the Prussian Academy of Arts, headed by Max Liebermann. In 1927, he declined a professorship in Königsberg in order to execute church murals in Gaislingen and Kattowitz. After the Nazi seizure of power, he moved to Salzburg, retained his Berlin studio, and exhibited at the National Gallery and the Venice Biennale in 1936. However, in 1937, his paintings were removed as "degenerate," his works were confiscated, and he was banned from painting. Volunteering as a war artist in the Reich Labor Service, he was drafted in 1944. He received Austrian citizenship in 1946 and devoted himself to sacred stained glass in the 1950s and 1960s, creating works that resonate with those of Anton Faistauer, Herbert Boeckl, Franz Sedlacek, and Johann Baptist Wenzel Kallina—a tradition of monumental, luminous church windows that revisited his early socially critical themes in his expressive later work. 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 and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.