Max Weiler Sunflowers - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2004

The second issue of the series on Austrian collections shows the image "Young Sunflower" by Max Weiler, which is owned by the Tyrolean Museum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck. The painter and graphic artist Max Weiler was born on 27.8.1910 in Absam / Tyrol. After graduating from the teacher training institute in Innsbruck, he studied from 1930 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Prof. Karl Sterrer. Already in 1936, the young artist worked on behalf of Rector Clemens Holzmeister on the project of the Austria Chapel of the World Exhibition in Paris and created the glass window: "Covenant in the Blood of the Son". He increasingly enjoyed many great international successes, for example, he represented Austria at the 1960 Venice Biennale and at the World Fair in Montreal (1967) he was represented with the pictures "Like a Landscape". His extensive work includes not only panel paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints, but also mosaics, glass paintings, frescoes and ceramic murals. Max Weiler is considered "the old master of Austrian contemporary painting". In 1961 he was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize, in 1979 he received the decoration for science and art. The dialogue with nature and the intensive consideration of its diverse manifestations developed into the central theme of his work. The reduction to the abstract, especially in the later years of his work, together with the use of strong, luminous colors, created a tension-filled emotional density. Max Weiler died on January 29, 2001 in Vienna.