Featured Parthenon by Oskar Strnad

Just sharing this color study I’ve owned since 2016. I’ve have been googling the artist ever since. Much was found about him and his later significance. Scarce little about this work. This image of the Parthenon in Athens is dated 1907, at the time when Oskar Strnad was just establishing his own architectural practice. Strnad is an important architect, draftsman, stage designer, one of the pioneers of New Viennese living and co-founded the so-called Viennese School of Modernism (architecture).


Pictured is Oskar Strnad’s chromolithograph “Der Parthenon” and the full-sized color study. The study is executed in gouache and pencil, on what looks to be a print of the key drawing for the chromolithograph.

and a few details...


Unknown to me in 2016, a German language book was just being published about the series it was part of. I recently reached out to an expert in Vienna, who led me to the book’s author.


The following link is for the book, "Wandtafelwerk für Schule und Haus” by Markus Kristan, who was very generous to me with his time and knowledge. He is curator of the architecture collection at the Albertina, Vienna, and has authored numerous essays and books on Austrian architecture and art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Thank you.

https://www.bibliothekderprovinz.at/buch/7018/

The following is a translation of the description and review in the link.

The blackboard work for school and home consists of 40 large-format color lithographs that were made by the k. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei were printed and relocated. The sheets should not only be used as a didactic teaching material, but above all serve for the aesthetic education of young people and adults. With them, good art should be available at affordable prices for everyone.

The blackboard work is closely related to the art education movement, which is part of the life reform movements that began throughout Europe around 1900. The ideas of the leading German, English, French and Austrian educators and art scholars, supported by a deeply enlightened humanism, were disseminated through congresses, exhibitions and publications.

In order to achieve high-quality, artistic designs, competitions were announced among artists who were partly members of the Hagenbund and the Secession. Today the sheets of the blackboard, which are popular in the art trade and with collectors, are undoubtedly some of the most beautiful and magnificent that was ever created in this field.

Review

For the first time the blackboard work of the k.k. Court and state printing scientifically recorded

The sight of the pictures should transport many back to their school days. Suddenly you have the smell of floor wax in the nose, which got a slightly sour note when entering the teaching material cabinet - where the class work was duplicated using a matrix. In addition to rolled up maps, there were also blackboard pictures on various topics that exuded a certain timelessness: You saw landscapes in all seasons, combined with corresponding activities in agriculture and viticulture. One looked into the workplaces of craftsmen, into times past and into distant countries. These images, which served as learning aids, are likely to have burned themselves into the collective memory of generations. Of course, they differed slightly from nation to nation - after all, it was also important to convey a portion of patriotism.

What the "Fitzroy Pictures" were in England, the "Images pour l’école" in France and the prints of the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, B. G. Teubner and R. Voigtländer in Germany, were sold in Austria by the k. k. Court and state printing relocated. This blackboard work for school and home, which was lithographed between 1903 and 1916, has 40 large-format sheets; now they have been scientifically recorded by Markus Kristan for the first time.

But these boards were always about much more than just illustrating certain topics in class. Rather, it was - in accordance with the ideas of reform education at the time - about awakening an aesthetic feeling. These lithographs were also seen as affordable art for everyone to decorate the home. In Austria a number of well-known artists took part in the project: Ferdinand Andri, Josef Engelhart, Carl Krenek, Max Kurzweil, Carl Moll, the architect Oskar Strnad etc. It is all the more surprising that it took a century for this treasure to be “ Folk Art ”was honored in a comprehensive, richly illustrated volume.

(Daniela Gregori, review in Artmagazine, No. 16, spectrum, from October 7, 2016)

Thanks for looking.
James.

 

Fascinating, James @Roaring20s an informative read and I love the artwork. A real treasure for sure.

 

what a shame these boards had the same fate as the good old rolled hanging maps for history - they often went to the dump.

 

Here is a link that shows the other images in this set.
https://www.beletage.com/en/objects/17-grafiken/1283-wandtafelwerk

 

Just out of curiosity, how do you pronounce that surname?

 

https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=Oskar Strnad&op=translate
Press the Audio icon
Str / nad

 

A elderly descendent of his lived nearby and downsized to a care facility. At the sale were some of his designed furniture and glassware. This artwork got my attention.