RUDOLF KLAUDUS (Großwarasdorf 1895 - 1979 Eisenstadt), Sun Flowers in red Vase, 1974

RUDOLF KLAUDUS*
(Großwarasdorf 1895 - 1979 Eisenstadt)
Sun Flowers in red Vase, 1974
oil/fiber board 41,5 x 33,5 cm
monogrammed and dated 74
verso signed, titled and dated sun flowers in red vase, Klaudus 974
Provenance: private property Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 2.000 - 4.000
START € 2.000

Austrian painter, educator and publicist of the 20th century. Representative of representational painting. Came from a Croatian farmers family in Burgenland, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. From 1926 teacher in Deutschkreutz, together in a group of artists with Alfred Pahr and Franz Erntl as a counter-position to Albert Kollmann and Franz Elek-Eiweck. Member of the Burgenland Art Association, wrote for the Croatian newspaper Hrvatske Novine. After the war, school inspector for Oberpullendorf, editor of the magazine Naše selo and collaborator with the youth newspaper Mladost. Founded the Burgenland Artists Group in Vienna in 1956 with Rudolf Kedl, Karl Prantl, Wolfgang Bambinger and Feri Zotter. Regularly participated in the Rabnitz Painting Weeks. Influenced by Croatian painters such as Vladimir Becic and Ljubo Babic, but also Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh. In 2016 described in the exhibition at the Landesgalerie Burgenland as a "painter of the colors". Created mainly color-intensive landscapes and still lifes.

Born into a Croatian farming family in Nebersdorf, now in Burgenland, Rudolf Klaudus had to do military service in the First World War after graduating from high school in Köszeg. Afterwards he decided to study at the Grafische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna as well as at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, led at that time by the famous sculptor Ivan Meštrović. Klaudus then worked in Deutschkreutz as a painter and art teacher at the local secondary school until 1936 and as an inspector for the Croatian school system in Burgenland from 1936 to 1938. The new rulers of the Hitler regime dismissed Klaudus, who had assumed the function of a press officer of the front-line militia in 1936, from his school post and subsequently also placed him in "protective custody". In addition, he was banned from practising painting. After the end of the war he was rehabilitated and appointed as a school inspector. Klaudus actively participated in the re-foundation of the Burgenland Art Association, which had been crushed by the National Socialists, and in 1955 he also took over the chairmanship. After its dissolution, Klaudus withdrew from Eisenstadt to Vienna, where he founded the Burgenland Artists' Group with artist friends in 1956 and remained its director until 1970. As a painter, Klaudus found his way to a luminous colourfulness via neo-objective tendencies in the 1930s. In his rendering of what he saw, he also relied on typification, metaphorisation and de-individualisation, as this had also become a principle of many German Expressionists who - like Klaudus, obviously - were inspired by the expressive original folk art and children's art. This enthusiasm also speaks especially from the still life with the sunflowers in the deep red vase on the blue tablecloth, which with the struck colour chord also evokes associations with folk art products.

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