274 - Ernst Paar* (Graz 1906 - 1986 Vienaa)

Ernst Paar* (Graz 1906 - 1986 Vienaa) Masks, 1935 oil/canvas 46 x 55 cm signed Paar, dated 35 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 2000 - 3000 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 2000 The Austrian artist Ernst Paar completed an apprenticeship as a lithographer in Graz and, from 1922, attended evening life drawing classes at the State Art School. After finishing his apprenticeship, he moved to Germany, where he attended the Stuttgart Academy in 1926/27. In 1930, Paar traveled to Paris with his painter friend Hans Stockbauer and attended the Académie Julian. In 1933, he moved to Vienna and worked as a graphic artist, while simultaneously making a name for himself as a member of the Graz Secession and the Hagenbund with Cubist and New Objectivity paintings of the Austrian New Objectivity movement – ​​an approach akin to that of masters such as Wilhelm Thöny, Max Beckmann, and Hans Fronius. After the Schutzbund uprising of 1934, he moved in the resistance circle around the Styrian architect Franz Schacherl. As a member of the Hagenbund's exhibition committee, he unsuccessfully attempted to organize an exhibition of the Graz Secession. Conscripted as a commercial artist during the Nazi dictatorship, he offered cultural resistance through his avant-garde painting. He was only allowed to exhibit once, but the show was closed for being labeled "degenerate art." In 1943, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. After the war, he worked as an assistant at the Academy of Applied Arts, but was dismissed in 1948 for a caricature critical of the government. A solo exhibition followed in 1950 at the Neue Galerie Graz. In 1951, he became vice president of the artists' group "Der Kreis," a key institution of the postwar avant-garde alongside the Art Club Vienna. He received the Theodor Körner Prize in 1963 and the City of Vienna Prize for Applied Arts in 1965. 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.