UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER
Anton Hanak's burning man at the international applied arts exhibition 1925, Austrian pavilion, Paris (built by J. Hoffmann)
Photography, 16.5 x 21.7 cm
verso stamped Photo Reiffenstein
provenance: Dipl. Ing. Erich Gusel, private collection Vienna
ESTIMATE #Euro 100 - 200
STARTING PRICE #Euro 100
Anton Hanak studied under Edmund Hellmer at the Vienna Academy and was a member of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstaette as well as a founding member of the oesterreichischer Werkbund. Hanak was a teacher at the Vienna School of Applied Arts and, from 1932, a professor at the Vienna Academy. Among others, Fritz Wotruba, Oskar Icha and Rudolf Reinhart studied with him. He was in correspondence with the Graz artist Rita Passini between 1913 and 1916. He created the sculptural decoration for several of Josef Hoffmann's buildings (including Villa Skywa-Primavesi, Landhaus Primavesi, Landhaus Ast) and, in the 1920s, for residential buildings owned by the municipality of Vienna. He created numerous portrait busts and monuments, including the Schmerzensmutter war memorial at Vienna's Central Cemetery, erected in 1925, and the bust of Victor Adler for the Republic Monument. His works have a visionary-symbolic character with some proximity to Expressionism, for example "The Last Man" from 1917 or "The Burning Man" from 1922. "The Burning Man" is considered an icon of modern sculpture in Austria. "Der brennende Mensch" was, after quite a few drawings and sculptural preparatory works, such as the bronze realized by Venturi Arte in Bologna, finally executed as a larger-than-life plaster figure in 1922/3. Already sinking to his knees, he stretches his arms towards the sky, seeking support there. The plaster sculpture, bronzed in a deep dark, was shown in 1925 at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, where it was awarded the "Grand Prix". It was not until 1951 that the city of Linz had the model cast in bronze.
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