1. Richard Gerstl was an Austrian painter and draughtsman known for his expressive psychologically insightful portraits, his lack of critical acclaim during his lifetime, and his affair with the wife of Arnold Schoenberg, which led to his suicide.
14 Facts About Richard Gerstl
1. 2.
Richard Gerstl was born in a prosperous civil family to Emil Gerstl, a Jewish merchant, and Maria Pfeiffer, a non-Jewish woman.
3.
In 1898, at the age of fifteen, Richard Gerstl was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he studied under the notoriously opinionated and difficult Christian Griepenkerl.
4.
Richard Gerstl began to reject the style of the Vienna Secession and what he felt was pretentious art.
5.
Frustrated with the lack of acceptance of his non-secessionist painting style, Richard Gerstl continued to paint without any formal guidance for two years.
6.
In 1904 and 1905, Richard Gerstl shared a studio with his former academy classmate and friend, Viktor Hammer.
7.
Regardless of their personal feelings, by 1906, Richard Gerstl had acquired his own studio.
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Richard Gerstl was radically opposed to and rejected contemporary art practice, namely that of the Jugendstil and Gustav Klimt.
9.
Richard Gerstl belonged for many years, as a young artist, to the so-called Schoenberg Circle.
10.
Richard Gerstl's works were rediscovered in the early 1930s, and their significance was recognized after 1945.
11.
Richard Gerstl became a key figure for the Austrian art scene, inspiring artists of the post-war era, even still in the time of Viennese Actionism.
12.
Since the 1980s, with the inclusion of his work in exhibitions of art from turn-of-the-century Vienna, Richard Gerstl has been recognized in the canon of art history.
13.
Shortly afterward, the Nazi presence in Austria hindered the further acclaim of the artist and it was not until after the war that Richard Gerstl was known in the United States.
14.
Sixty-six paintings and eight drawings attributed to Richard Gerstl are known, although it is possible he destroyed many more or that others could have been lost over the years.