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A calling for collecting

Art from the spiritual godfather of Austria's avant-garde
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
May 7th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Matisse is one of many big names in the exhibition.
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From Hollar to Beuys


at Galerie Klementinum Ends June 29. Křížovnická 190, Prague 1-Old Town. Open Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
This selection of works is from the collection of Monsignor Otto Mauer, who is considered to be among the most important gallery directors and patrons of European Modern art, especially of the Austrian avant-garde. It features 61 works by 55 artists, including some of the most important of the 20th century. Alongside Picasso, Matisse, Klee and Chagall are Austrian artists Schiele, Klimt, Kokoschka and Hundertwasser, as well as lesser-known Austrian Modern artists, some with equally compelling works.
Mauer (1907–73) was a Roman Catholic priest who in 1954 opened the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in the shadow of Vienna’s St. Stephan’s Cathedral. His gallery was key in promoting avant-garde art from the mid-1950s through the 1960s, and ceased only with Mauer’s death.
As a youth, Mauer had been active in the Catholic movement Bund Neuland (New Land Alliance, a Catholic renewal movement). He became a priest in 1931, but during the Nazi reign was forbidden to teach or preach. He was also arrested several times during this period. After the war, Mauer helped to establish Katholische Aktion Österreich, and became co-editor of a cultural-religious magazine.
His Galerie nächst St. Stephan was a natural extension of his earlier activities, and provided a significant boost to Austrian contemporary art. While there were critics of his activities within the church, Mauer defended himself by pointing out that the church had always been involved with contemporary art of the respective periods, a tradition lost during the Enlightenment. He was trying to re-establish the dialogue with contemporary artists.
Mauer’s collection grew to immense proportions, comprising more than 3,000 works of art, mostly received as gifts from the artists or purchased when they were hardly known. After Mauer’s death, his collection was integrated into the collection of the Dommuseum in Vienna.
This exhibition begins with a few pre-Modern works, including Czech artist Václav Hollar’s finely drawn Westminster Abbey (1654) and a couple of pieces by the Frenchman Jacques Callot (1592). There is also Goya’s Devota Profesion (1799), and a nightmarish scene from 1899 by Odilon Redon.
Following this is a section of Modernist classics that includes not only the famous artists named above but also Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti (a preparatory drawing for a sculpture) and others.
Some works are a disappointment, such as a rough, incomplete sketch by Klimt. However, this is quickly compensated for by stronger works, such Schiele’s grayish-blue tinted drawing of a young woman’s naked backside in which the figure is crouched, seemingly holding her underpants over her head, with stiff body hairs protruding from her skin.
Also in this section is Paul Klee’s Insects (1919), a delicate drawing of creepy-crawly bugs, spider webs and tiny winding stairs, with light blocks of color (yellow, green and blue) in the background. It could be a prototype for something issuing from Tim Burton’s phantasmagorical films, though Klee’s imagination easily transcends anything by the popular Hollywood director.
The next section, works from 1930–38 from the Bundes Neuland, includes only two artists: Rudolf Szyszkowitz and Leopold Birstinger, contributing stark drawings of desperate people praying.
The section “Expression and Magic” takes the same themes to higher levels with works by Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Alfred Kubin (born in Litoměřice in 1877) and others. After this is the section “New Beginning” (1945–54) with postwar works by Austrian and French artists. The strongest pieces are abstract works by Herbert Boeckl, Jean René Bazaine and Alfred Manessier, who create melting blocks of color that resemble stained glass windows after a heavy rainfall.
Three contemporary abstract art movements are combined in the next section, representing the years 1955–1963: abstraction, Informel and New Figuration. This is the largest section in the show, encompassing artists such as Hundertwasser and Yves Klein as well as the Austrian artists most closely associated with Mauer’s gallery, including Arnulf Rainer, Josef Mikl and Markus Prachensky.
Rainer’s untitled pastel work from the 1960s is a furious black cloud, drawn over and again with only a few escaping squiggles. Mikl’s Sketch of a Portrait of Christ and Otto Breich (1966) is a smear of blue and violet with dabs of red on light-brown cardboard. And Prachensky’s Red on Black (1958) is a violent signature in red over black, like calligraphy written in blood.
The second-to-last section, “Post-Modern — Objects and Rituals” (1963–73), has seven artists, including Joseph Beuys. But his contribution is a disappointing outline drawing of a seated woman with hard lines over her chest.
The last section is titled “Psycho-Pathological Art From Gugging,” with works by Johann Hauser and August Walla. Gugging is a psychiatric and neurological hospital in Lower Austria, and Mauer had a strong interest in the link between art and schizophrenia. Hauser (born in Bratislava in 1926) became a superstar of the genre of “outsider art,” and his green drawing Whale (1972–73) is classic Art Brut.
Monsignor Mauer’s everlasting interest was in the modern life of the soul. But when he opened his gallery Galerie nächst St. Stephan in 1954, it seems he truly found his calling.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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