Leopold Museum Presents Precursor of Modernism Anton Romako

16.04.2018

80 works on display in the most comprehensive exhibition in 25 years!

Anton Romako (1832–1889) is among the most eminent Austrian artists from the second half of the 19th century. More than 25 years after the last retrospective of his works was shown in Austria, the Leopold Museum is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of the painter’s oeuvre, which was formally opened on Thursday, 5th April. The solo exhibition “ANTON ROMAKO. THE BEGINNING OF MODERNISM” honors a painter who “anachronistically” pointed the way ahead into modernism and was esteemed by artists and connoisseurs of the early 20th century, including the Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka and the art critic Ludwig Hevesi. The collectors Oskar Reichel and Rudolf Leopold recognized the artist’s genius and compiled numerous works by Romako in their collections.
 
According to the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the artist of “stylistic pluralism” Anton Romako opened up a “field of experimentation towards modernism”: “With its works from its own collection and those comprised in the Leopold Private Collection, the Leopold Museum has recourse to one of the largest compilations of works by Anton Romako, comparable only to that of the Belvedere, which, as the exhibition’s main lender, has provided us with 15 loans.”
Anton Romako is one of the most famous but also most contradictory artists of his time.
 
Incomprehension and contempt accompanied his oeuvre, which transcended the border to a new interpretation of the visible world in an unconventional manner. Romako’s biography shaped by misfortunes provided the background for the artist’s creations. His search for adequate formulations for the questions of his time was also his attempt to overcome his personal fate.
The exhibition’s curator Marianne Hussl-Hörmann sees the fact that the Leopold Museum is currently also devoting a large-scale presentation to the Expressionist Egon Schiele on the 100th anniversary of his death as a “felicitous encounter” of the 19th century precursor of modernism Anton Romako with Schiele, a main representative of Viennese Modernism. 
 
Like the “prince of painters” Hans Makart (1840-1884), Anton Romako is considered a history painter. While his novel and ground-breaking way of seeing, as expressed in arguably his most famous painting “Tegetthoff in the Naval Battle of Lissa” (1882), failed to convince contemporary critics, he is lauded today as a “modernist pioneer”. 
 
Orphaned from an early age, Romako’s father, a wealthy manufacturer, left the artist and his siblings a fortune, which – initially administered by his guardian – enabled Anton Romako to live a life free from financial worry for many decades. Following studies in Vienna and Munich, he embarked on a career as a genre- and portrait painter in Rome, where he would spent 20 years of his life. He married Sophie Köbel, the daughter of a German architect, and the couple had five children. Around 1870 a distinctive stylistic reorientation occurred in his oeuvre and led to a loss of his success. After 14 years of marriage, his wife left him. In 1876 Romako returned to Vienna with his eldest children and turned into a largely misunderstood eccentric. Garish colors, nervous lines and a radical reduction of temporal and spatial dimensions introduced an irritating psychology into the depictions and led to a “re-arranging” of reality, as the contributor to the catalogue Herbert Giese put it. Today these idiosyncrasies make the artist appear to us as a genius precursor of early Expressionism. The exhibition features central works from the artist’s oeuvre, such as “Italian Fisher Child” (c. 1873/75), the “exaggerated” portraits of the printing plant proprietor and Chief Technology Officer of the newspaper “Neue Freie Presse” Christoph Reisser and his wife Isabella (1885), as well as the works commissioned by the Kuefsteins, including the “Portrait of Countess Maria Magda Kuefstein” (1885/86). 
 
The collector Elisabeth Leopold reminded visitors of the art historian Fritz Novotny, who had saved Romako’s oeuvre from oblivion. She recalled that Rudolf Leopold had collected very specific works, and had been especially interested in the Reisser portraits. Back in Vienna, “where nothing good was awaiting the artist“, Romako had started to “look into the hearts of people”.  
Exhibition opening ceremony
 
The official exhibition opening, hosted by Hans-Peter Wipplinger and board member Elisabeth Leopold, was attended by some 500 guests, including the Italian ambassador Sergio Barbanti, the French ambassador Jean-Louis Falconi, the Hungarian ambassador János Perényi, consul Mag. Andreas Bardeau (Schloss Kornberg), the chairmen of the Leopold Museum Helmut Moser and Carl Aigner, MAK CEO Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Belvedere CEO Stella Rollig, Lentos director Hemma Schmutz as well as the Leopold Museum’s Managing Director Gabriele Langer and the president of the Secession Herwig Kempinger. Among the opening guests were also numerous private lenders, as well as artists, including Martha Jungwirth and Walter Vopava, and business representatives, among them NÖ-Versicherung CEO Hubert Schultes and KPMG partner Bernhard Mechtler. Also in attendance were im Kinsky managing partner Christoph la Garde, art dealer Alexander Giese, the collectors Ernst Ploil, Waltraud and Diethard Leopold, Gerda Leopold as well as Denis Engin. Further visitors included Albertina curators Elisabeth Dutz and Markus Kristan, Belvedere curator Franz Smola, Dorotheum expert Ursula Rohringer, Klimt descendent Gustav Huber, the vice president of the Association of Friends of the Leopold Museum Thomas Mondl, and many others.
 
The exhibition “ANTON ROMAKO. THE BEGINNING OF MODERNISM” is shown until 18th June 2018 at the Leopold Museum, open daily from 10 am to 6 pm. On Thursdays the museum is open until 9 pm.
 
Curator Marianne Hussl-Hörmann will guide visitors through the exhibition on Friday, 15th June 2018, at 4 pm.
 
The presentation is accompanied by a catalogue in German and English with essays by Herbert Giese, Ralph Gleis and Marianne Hussl-Hörmann and a foreword by Hans-Peter Wipplinger. Comprising 199 pages and published with Walther König publishers, Cologne, the book is available for EUR 29.90 at the Leopold Museum Shop.
 

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