Friedrich König, De la saga des Nibelung Lot n° 21

Friedrich König Vienna 1857 - 1941 Vienna From the Saga of the Nibelungs Oil on canvas 159 x 205 cm Signed At the back: exhibition label of the Munich Secession One of the most important painters of Art Nouveau in Vienna around 1900 was Friedrich König! As a co-founder of the world-famous Vienna Secession, he ranked among the artistic elite in Vienna at the turn of the century. Together with his close companions Josef Engelhart, Rudolf Bacher and Maximilian Lenz, F. König represented a separate style group within the Secessionists that organized very successful exhibitions. In his works the painter shows figural motifs and landscape depictions. These extraordinarily light-filled impressions show his great skill. In his entire oeuvre, the painter impressively expresses the artistic forms of Viennese Art Nouveau and Symbolism. Friedrich König began his studies at the Vienna School of Applied Arts and then continued them at the Vienna Academy from 1878 to 1883. His teachers were Christian Griepenkerl, August Eisenmenger and Carl von Blaas. After his years of apprenticeship in Vienna he moved to Munich and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts there. After graduation he travelled extensively to France, Germany, Spain and Italy for study purposes. In addition to his poster designs and picture designs for the magazine "Ver Sacrum", he also created the interior decoration for the 1st exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1897. The architect Josef Maria Olbrich commissioned him in 1898 - 1899 to design the murals for a room in a house in Hinterbrühl near Vienna. Shortly afterwards in 1900 Friedrich König painted two works for Karl Wittgenstein. These served as wall coverings for the music room in Wittgenstein's city palace in what was then Alleestraße, now Argentinierstraße, in Vienna. As a member since its founding, Friedrich König was represented at the vast majority of exhibitions of the Vienna Secession until 1939. In 1901 and 1904 he also participated with paintings in the "Great Art Exhibition in Dresden", in 1901 and 1909 respectively in the "Glass Palace" and the "Secession" in Munich. In 1911 König was invited to Rome where he took part in the International Art Exhibition. In 1929 the Vienna Secession honored Friedrich König as its oldest member on his 70th birthday with a retrospective of his complete works. His long-time painter companion Josef Engelhart wrote the following lines about him: "The viewer who steps in front of Friedrich König's works immediately feels that a deeply inward artist is speaking to him, a painter who traces nature with an almost feminine tenderness, a poet for whom pen and brush are the means to describe his dreams. " Works by his hand can be found in the: Belvedere, Vienna, the Wien-Museum, Vienna, the Leopold Museum, Vienna, and in numerous public and private collections in Austria and abroad