Autengruber, Jan

Educated at the School of Applied Arts in Prague , where he studied with Professor Dieteti. Among his colleagues at the School were, later become famous artists, Oldřich Blazichek , Joseph Lada and others.

Then he continued his studies at the Munich Academy of Arts . Twice won the annual Academy Award. This attracted the attention of the German public, which was reflected in the number of exhibitions he organized at home (in the Czech Republic) and in Germany ( Prague , Munich , Berlin , Dresden , Mannheim , Hanover , Cologne , Hamburg and Frankfurt ). The success of the artist was also noted by German critics. In the Czech nationalist milieu, however, criticism and the public behaved, with rare exceptions, very restrained.

In 1907-1913 he worked in Munich , where he was mainly engaged in portraiture , painted nude paintings, and copied paintings by old masters.

In 1910 he made a bicycle trip to Paris. In 1913 he won a scholarship and went to Italy. In 1913-1915, he lived and worked on the Apennine Peninsula, painted landscapes.

Member of the First World War. In 1917 he signed up as a volunteer and went to the front, but was soon demobilized.

After the war, from 1918 he worked in Southern Bohemia, then settled in Prague and went to study at the University of Prague , where he studied art history at the Faculty of Philosophy.

He fell ill with a Spaniard , who turned into severe pneumonia . He died in the Prague hospital Vinohrady in 1920.

At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the artist's style was marked by a calm manner, with an emphasis on the expression and freshness of the gesture. Italian landscapes, especially executed in the south, in the Taormina area, are characterized by a light, bright style, the paintings are full of expressive color spots. After 1910, the style of writing gradually gives way to generalized dynamic compositions typical of his later works.

In Italy, biblical stories began to appear in his paintings ( Crucifixion, Ascension to the Cross, St. Sebastian and Salome ).

• Self portrait - 1910,
• Seamstresses - 1912,
• Bavarian peasant woman - 1913,
• Before bathing - 1913,
• Sad Pinchio in Rome - 1914,
• Baptism of Christ - 1914,
• Selected - 1917,
• Spring mood Pacov - 1917-1918,
• Portrait of a grandmother - 1918.

• Vojtěch Lahoda, Jan Jedlička . Jan Autengruber 1887-1920. ChechArtBooks / 2009. - ISBN 80-86300-93-1 .

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