Jan Autengruber 1887 - 1920

Jan Autengruber (April 25, 1887 Pacov - July 15, 1920 Prague) studied at the Academy of Arts in Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In the years 1907-1913 he worked in Munich, in 1910 he made a bike trip to Paris and in the period 1913-1915 he lived in Italy. In the penultimate year of the war he enlisted and went to the front, but was soon discharged. After 1918 he worked in South Bohemia and in Prague. He contracted the Spanish flu, which developed into a heavy pneumonia. He died in Prague’s Vinohrady hospital in 1920. The publication is devoted to the basic areas of the still unknown work of Autengruber. In Munich the painter engaged in portraiture, nude studies, but also in copying the paintings of the old masters and still life motifs with masks. At the end of the first decade the artist's style became more relaxed, with emphasis on the expression and freshness of the gesture. In the Italian landscapes, especially those painted in the south, in and around Taormina, the volatile, vibrant style of colour spots from around 1910 gradually gave way to the expressive, summarizing and dynamic composition typical of the later work. In Italy the artist realized that he had to supersede the virtuoso painting skills with radical expressive engagement. Biblical themes started to appear in his paintings. The paintings called Crucifixion, The Raising of the Cross, Saint Sebastian and Salome, which are works of a radical, expressively lacerated dynamic form, mark Jan Autengruber’s creative peak, and without exaggeration, put him on a par with Lovis Corinth, Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann and Max Beckmann. English and German summaries.