Georg Maximilian Rauch, Daisies

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This artwork is titled "daisies" c.1980 is a color screenprint by noted Austrian artist Georg Maximilian Rauch, 1924-2006. It is … Read more This artwork is titled "daisies" c.1980 is a color screenprint by noted Austrian artist Georg Maximilian Rauch, 1924-2006. It is signed, titled and numbered 5/250 in pencil by the artist. The image size is 29.75 x 18.5 inches, framed is 40.25 x 28.25 inches. It is framed in a custom black metal frame.

About the artist.

Georg Maximilian Rauch was born in Salzburg in 1924, but spent his early years in Vienna, surrounded by the paintings of Klimt and Schiele. The latter artist would become a strong influence on Georg’s style and paintings. Though Georg was partly Jewish and his mother was hiding Jews behind false walls in their Vienna apartment, Rauch was nonetheless drafted into Hitler’s army and sent to the Russian trenches. In 1944 he was captured by the Russians in Romania, and force-marched to the Ukraine. Post-war he studied architecture and drawing with Professor Boeckl at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Vienna.
Finally, at 26 years old, Georg was free to paint and this he did with a vengeance. His primary theme was sad looking men, or harlequins. His friends all said, “Why that’s you!” He strenuously denied this and continued with the same theme for ten years. He finally was done and also recognized that his friends had been correct. That these first paintings had served as a catharsis, as unconscious auto-therapy for all that he had experienced during the war; the shame, grief, fear, horror.
After crossing the ocean in 1966 Georg’s expressionistic style changed for a few years and his paintings became more hard edge while living in New York. He and his American wife, Phyllis, moved permanently to Mexico in 1976. There, inspired by the colors, landscapes, trees, and his own love for the country, his paintings acquired new themes, including multi-colored mountain landscapes, trees (especially red ones) fantasy architecture or “dream houses”, chairs of all kinds, and flowers. The last year of his life finally saw the publication of his WWII memoir, first titled: The Jew with the Iron Cross-, A Record of Survival in WWII Russia. In 2014 Farrar, Strous and Giroux published the “official version” entitled Unlikely Warrior, A Jew in Hitler’s Army.
As a young artist he was awarded the Theodor Koerner Prize for a paper he wrote on the theory of color. Paintings of his are included in all of the major museums of Vienna – city, state, Albertina. Georg Rauch died in Jocotepec, Mexico in 2006.

Museum shows:

1955 Wiener Secession in Vienna, where he also was accepted as a member.
1967 Montreal World Exhibition, Austrian Pavilion
1988 Museo Cultural Cabañas, Guadalajara, Jalisco
2000 Museo Ex-Convento del Carmen, Guadalajara
2008 Homenaje, Museo Gonzalez Gallo, Chapala
2015-16 Museo Palacio del Gobierno del Estad de Jalisco
The Instituto Cultural Gonzalez Gallo has only one permanent art collection and that is a series of paintings and drawings selected from Georg’s early work in Mexico and donated by his widow, Phyllis Rauch. See less