Georg Eisler
Encyclopedia
Georg Eisler was an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n painter from the school of Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

 who lived from 1928 to 1998. His father Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

 was a composer and his mother Charlotte Eisler, née Demant
Charlotte Eisler
Charlotte Eisler was an Austrian singer, pianist and music teacher associated with the Second Viennese School....

 a well-known singer and music teacher.

His subject matter themes have included landscapes (often industrial featuring the north of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 where he had lived after evacuating from Austria in 1936), group or crowd scenes (including jazz clubs and public transport) as well as nudes and still lifes. He returned to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 in 1946 where he died in 1998.

Eisler lectured at various universities including the Berlin University of the Arts
Berlin University of the Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a public art school in Berlin, Germany, one of the four universities in the city...

 (Udk), HFBK Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...

, and the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

.

Life

Out of political reasons, his mother left Austria in 1936 and lived in with Georg for two years in Moscow. They then went to Prague and in 1939 to England, after the Nazi invasion of Austria. In Manchester Georg attended Manchester Central High School for Boys and later became a student at the Stockport School of Art and Manchester Academy. He was introduced to Oskar Kokoschka, the famed expressionist artist, in London, who agreed to give him lessons. In 1946 he returned to Vienna to continue his art studies but never lost touch with England. In 1970 the famed conductor, Otto Klemperer commissioned Eisler to design the sets and costumes for Mozart's "Magic Flute" at Covent Garden Royal Opera House. In 1968 he was elected President of the Vienna Secession, and served two terms. In this capacity he initiated the successful Secession show at London's Royal Academy. He also had several one-man shows in England. One was the show at the Manchester City Art Gallery in 1988 (which resulted in a BBC program) and at the Fisher Fine Art Gallery in London in 1989. He exhibited his work in numerous venues around Europe, including participation in the 1982 Venice Biennale. He also commenced his career as a major book illustrator. He taught regularly at the Salzburg Simmer Academy and several times at the German Summer School run by the University of New Mexico in Taos. A major retrospective of his work was presented at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna in 2001
and another at the Albertina Museum in Vienna in 2001. His work is in the permanent collections of the Albertina, the Portrait Gallery of the British Museum in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In 2003 the Leica Company celebrated his lifelong friendship with Cartier Bresson by presenting a joint show of their work in Vienna. Annually, the Georg Eisler Medal is awarded to the outstanding young artist in Austria. Georg Eisler died in 1998 and is survived by his
wife Alice, who resides in Vienna.
One can see some of his works dedicated to the Shoah in the TV series " Holocaust"(1978), in which they are known as " Karl Weiss' drawings".

Further reading

  • Eisler, Georg, "My Father" in Blake, David
    David Blake
    David Blake may refer to:* DJ Quik, U.S. rapper/record producer whose real name is David Blake* David Blake , Australian Major General* Dave Blake , politician from Manitoba Canada...

    (ed.), Hanns Eisler: A Miscellany. Routledge
    Routledge
    Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...

    , 1995. ISBN 3718655756
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