Stribach 1868 - 1926 St. Justina
Child
Oil on cardboard
25 x 24 cm
Signed lower right: Egger Lienz
Inscribed on the reverse: Egger Lienz / Aus dem Bilde / "die Mütter“ / 1922
Kirschl WV no. M 566
Provenienz:
Estate of the artist
Private collection of the heirs, Vienna
Private collection, Tyrol
Literatur:
Heinrich Hammer, Albin Egger-Lienz, Innsbruck 1930, p. 285, registered as„1922 Mütter“, Study no. 2 („Zum Kind“), no ill.
Wilfried Kirschl, Albin Egger Lienz 1868-1926. Das Gesamtwerk, Monographie in zwei Bänden, vol. II, catalogue raisonné, Innsbruck Vienna 1996, ill. p. 566, M 566
Albin Egger Lienz was born in East Tyrol in 1868. From 1884 to 1893 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Around 1900
he moved to Vienna and became a member of the Cooperative of Visual Artists as well as a founding member of the Hagenbund artists’ association. In 1909 he became a member of the Secession. Egger Lienz is among the most important painters from Tyrol in the early part of the 20th century. A major role is played in his works by the
interplay between hope and desperation. The painting shown here can be assigned to the artist’s late work and represents the portrait of an infant. It shows an detail from a large painting titled ‘Mother’ from 1922, which today can be found in the Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck. Similarly, it resembles the depiction of a small child found in the 1918 painting called ‘Generations’. In the war-torn period these pictures were created in, the motif of a child represents a ray of light, a moment of hope of a better future. The innocent child symbolises the new beginning