Widder Auctions

Fair Partner ✔
Great Art - Small Price from 10 am - Masterpieces from 3 pm

ALBERT BIRKLE* (Berlin 1900 - 1986 Melk)

After the storm, around 1928
gouache/cardboard 82 x 59 cm

SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 1600 - 3000
STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 1600

The German painter and draftsman Albert Birkle completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter, studied from 1920 to 1925 at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin and was a master student of Arthur von Kampf. During his studies he developed a religiously influenced, socially critical realism with formal-aesthetic, neo-objective elements, which bore caricatural traits, especially in his character heads. Standing between Expressionism and New Objectivity and often overdrawn into the fantastic, a direct and close reference to the Christian Passion is often recognizable. As the youngest member, Birkle was accepted into the Berlin Secession in 1921, later he was accepted into the Prussian Academy of Arts, led by Max Liebermann as president. The artist turned down the offer of a professorship at the Königsberg Academy in 1927 in order to carry out commissions for church murals in Gaislingen and Katowice, among other places. After the seizure of power Birkle moved to Salzburg, keeping his Berlin studio. In 1936 he exhibited at the Berlin National Gallery and represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. The paintings shown there were removed from the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich in 1937, other works of his were confiscated from public collections as degenerate, and he himself was banned from painting. Birkle volunteered for the Reich Labor Service, which allowed him to temporarily avoid military service. He worked as a war painter, war correspondent and had to enlist in 1944. In 1946 Birkle received Austrian citizenship and devoted himself primarily to sacred design paths as a glass painter. In the 1950s and 1960s he produced significant works in this field. In his late work as a painter and draftsman, he drew on the socially critical tendencies of his early motifs in an expressive style. Further artists and styles: New Objectivity, Arthur Kampf, Max Liebermann, Anton Faistauer, Herbert Boeckl, Franz Sedlacek, Johann Baptist Wenzel Kallina, stained glass
PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.