2023-11-28 17:33:41
Two exhibitions worth seeing that open on Wednesday evening in Vienna pay tribute to the work of the publisher, gallerist and art dealer Otto Kallir (1894-1978), who helped like no other to bring Austrian modernism to world recognition. At Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, the focus is on artists who were significantly supported by Kallir: Schiele, Kubin, Gerstl, Kokoschka… In the gallery next to St. Stephan, the history of the rooms is dedicated.
“Until the interwar period, Vienna did not have a developed gallery scene for contemporary art. Until then, the artists had to advertise themselves,” says Jane Kallir. Otto Kallir’s granddaughter, who continues her grandfather’s work in New York, is one of the most prominent experts on an era that her grandfather first brought to the attention of American collectors and museums and which became a global brand following his death: “Vienna um 1900”. “I saw him as a gentleman from the Old World, which made him a bit strange to me. But I grew up with the art that was important to him. That undoubtedly influenced me.”
“My grandfather was extremely energetic and would jump from one idea to another,” remembers Jane Kallir. When the cost of living rose enormously during the economic depression and gallery sales collapsed, he invented the “pay-as-you-wish” principle. The 69-year-old also sparkles with life and talks with great enthusiasm regarding the great achievements of her grandfather, who opened his Neue Galerie in 1923 with the first major Schiele exhibition since the artist’s death in 1918 and showed Schiele’s first solo exhibition in the USA in 1941. An oil painting was purchased by an emigrant for $250; not a single one of the paper works offered for prices between $20 and $60 was sold.
Later, when prices had already risen significantly, he offered Schiele paintings to US museums comparatively cheaply. “He knew how important it was for museums to own works by Schiele in terms of importance and price development,” says the granddaughter. Just as he knew years before what the Nazis’ coming to power would mean for him as a Jew and as a dealer of “degenerate art.”
In 1938, Otto Kallir handed over the Neue Galerie (which today lives on in the name chosen by Ronald Lauder for his New York museum in 2001) to his colleague Vita Künstler and fled to Switzerland, then on to Paris. There he founded the St. Etienne Gallery, named following St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, which he opened in New York in 1939 following migrating to the USA. Today it is led by Jane Kallir. Her grandfather had already prophesied to her that she would pursue the same career as him, she says of a conversation she once had in the kitchen: neither of them had enough talent as artists…
The second exhibition, which can be viewed in the former rooms of the Neue Galerie, reports on how comprehensive the talents of Otto Kallir were, who in 1931 saved the rest of Richard Gerstl’s work, which was gathering dust in a warehouse, from destruction. “In the 100th year, we wanted to consciously face our own history,” says Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, who runs the gallery next to St. Stephan, in an interview with the APA. “I think there are only a few galleries that can look back on a hundred years of activity.” The fact that this is now possible in a cabinet exhibition accompanied by a 56-page brochure is also due to the fact that Otto Kallir gave the entire archive of the Neue Galerie to the Belvedere in 1973, where it has been researched ever since and is also accessible in digital form.
Kallir has organized almost 130 exhibitions in the Neue Galerie’s 15 years, an incredible number whose impression is only exceeded by the wide variety of topics that these exhibitions covered. Personnel and artist groups alternated with presentations such as “Of Art and Everyday Life in the Soviet Union”, “Aussee and the Salzkammergut” or “Peasant Painting from Three Centuries”. There were also cactus, stamp and airmail exhibitions. Kallir’s interests were diverse.
After 1945, Kallir formally took over his gallery in Vienna once more, which once more had an avant-garde function in collaboration with the Art Club, but was no longer actively involved in managing it. While he concentrated on his activities in the USA, in 1954 he rented the premises to Monsignor Otto Mauer, who bought it in 1973 for the gallery he founded next to St. Stephan. When she started working here in 1978, Rosemarie Schwarzwälder says she was aware of its great heritage: “You always notice that you are standing in rooms where art has been exhibited for decades.”
(SERVICE – Exhibitions “100 years of Neue Galerie Wien. Homage to Otto Kallir”, vernissage: November 29th, 7 p.m., until February 2nd, 2024, Monday – Friday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, Vienna 1, Strauchgasse 2; “Grünangergasse 1. Otto Kallir and the Neue Galerie in contemporary historical documents 1923-1954”, vernissage: November 29th, 5:30 p.m., until January 20th, 2024, gallery next to St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna 1, Grünangergasse 1)
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