477 - Max Weiler* (Absam 1910 - 2001 Vienna)

Max Weiler* (Absam 1910 - 2001 Vienna) Colorful Earth, 1991 color lithography/paper 62 x 49 cm signed Weiler, dated 91 inscribed Farbig die Erde, numered 14/120 depicted in online catalogue raisonné Weiler, nr. 342 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 1400 - 2400 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 1400 Max Weiler attended the Toni Kirchmayr art school in Innsbruck and, starting in 1930, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Karl Sterrer, entering the latter’s master class in 1933. In 1936, Clemens Holzmeister commissioned him to collaborate on the artistic design of the Austrian Chapel within the Papal Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. During the Second World War, Weiler initially worked as an assistant teacher in Telfs and Zams (near Landeck) before being conscripted into the German Wehrmacht in 1942 for service in Northern Italy and Yugoslavia. He returned to Gerlos in 1945 and won the competition to execute the frescoes for the Theresienkirche in the Hungerburg district of Innsbruck. In 1951, he held his first solo exhibitions at the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, the Galerie Würthle in Vienna, and the Neue Galerie in Linz. He was appointed Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1964. The first monograph on Max Weiler, edited by Wilfried Skreiner, was published in 1975. An exhibition of Weiler’s work was held at the Albertina’s Graphic Collection in Vienna in 1978, followed by numerous other exhibitions both at home and abroad. Max Weiler’s artistic development unfolded within the dynamic context of Austrian Modernism and post-war painting. His training and subsequent career at the Vienna Academy brought him into contact with figures such as Herbert Boeckl, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Anton Kolig, Oskar Kokoschka, and Anton Faistauer; their engagement with color, landscape, the human figure, and an increasingly liberated visual language served as key reference points for 20th-century Austrian painting. Josef Dobrowsky and Wilhelm Thöny also belong to this broader context of Austrian Expressionist painting, whereas artists such as Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, and Fritz Wotruba represent the subsequent evolution of Austrian art after 1945. In this process, Weiler’s distinctive synthesis of landscape, observation of nature, and an increasingly abstract formal language evolved into a unique position situated between figurative painting, Austrian Modernism, and Art Informel. 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.