Aloys Wach

_{1892 Lambach - Braunau am Inn 1940}

Aloys Wachlmayer, also known as Aloys Wach, was an Austrian painter and printmaker. At the early stages of his artistic career he was mostly known for his expressionistic and cubistic artworks. In 1912 he studied at the private institute Knirr und Sailer in Munich for a year and from 1913 to 1914 he visited the Académie Colarossi in Paris, where he befriended Amedeo Modigliani. With the beginning of the First World War he returned to Germany and was drafted into the army. Afterwards he traveled to Berlin and came into close contact with the inspiring Blauer Reiter – Gruppe (Blue Rider Group) and the Galerie Sturm, where he contributed to several expressionistic papers.
Later in Munich he became a member of the cultural committee and published several expressionistic wood engravings, which – after the disintegration of the Bavarian Council Republic in the 1920s – forced him to flee to Braunau. There he dedicated himself to painting mostly still life and landscape motifs. From 1920 to 1940 he belonged to the artist association MAERZ and in 1923 he witnessed the making of the IKG (artist’s guild of the Innviertel) as a founding member. During the 1930s he mostly created religious artworks. With the annexation of Austria, he was blacklisted as a painter. The district museum of Herzogsburg in Braunau am Inn houses the largest collection of his artworks.