STEPHAN HLAWA (Vienna 1896 - 1977 Vienna), Portrait Dr. Fiala I, 1945

STEPHAN HLAWA*
(Vienna 1896 - 1977 Vienna)
Portrait Dr. Fiala I, 1945
watercolor and pencil/paper, 60,7 x 42,5 cm
signed Hlawa and dated 45
verso inscribed Dr. Fiala Dirigent + Komponist
Provenance: estate of the artist

ESTIMATE °€ 800 - 1.000
START € 600

Austrian painter, graphic artist, stage and costume designer of the 20th century. Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts with Rudolf Bacher and singing at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts. From 1932 worked as a stage designer for the Burgtheater, State Opera, Theater an der Wien, Volksoper and Salzburg Festival, among others. From 1935 member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. From 1945 to 1948 worked at the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck. 1971 designed the arrivals hall at the airport in Vienna Schwechat. Erich Fiala collected historical musical instruments with his wife Isolde Ahlgrimm, organized concerts together at Palais Pallavicini. Active in the art trade, 1940 founded the Strudlhof Gallery.

The Viennese-born artist Stephan Hlawa studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts with Rudolf Bachler and singing at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts. He worked primarily as a stage and costume designer at the most important theatres in the country - at the Vienna Burgtheater between 1932 and 1945 and from 1948 for the Vienna State Opera and Volksoper, as well as for the Vienna Volkstheater, the Salzburg Festival and the Innsbruck Landestheater. However, he also appeared as a painter, graphic artist and book illustrator. For example, he contributed twelve original etchings to Hans Müller's Mirror of Agrippina from 1919. A development from an expressionist diction to a moderate modern style can be traced in his artistic oeuvre.
In the portrait studies presented here of the Purkersdorf-born music lover, musical instrument collector, concert manager, art dealer and partner in the Manner factory Erich Fiala, Hlawa's engagement with the most diverse modern currents in Austrian portrait painting after the end of the Second World War becomes apparent. From Sergius Pauser he seems to have partly adopted the pose language of the sitter, from Josef Dobrowsky the expressionist impetus, from Herbert Boeckl the courage for analytical abstraction and the desire for colouristic experimentation, and perhaps also from the young Weiler the art of blurring the boundaries between painting and drawing. When he portrays Fiala in tailcoat and glasses, Hlawa also benefits from his many years of experience as a costume designer: with just a few brushstrokes he knows how to accentuate the characteristic and the moment typical of Fiala's problematic figure. In his first marriage, Fiala was married to the famous Viennese harpsichordist and expert on historical musical instruments Isolde Ahlgrimm, whose concert manager he was to become. The habitus of this portrait therefore resonates with associations with portraits of vocal soloists, concert musicians or conductors. Hlawa's portraits were created immediately after the end of the war, when Fiala applied for exemption from prosecution for former NSDAP members. The request was granted.

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