(St. Martin/Lofer 1887–1930 Vienna) Portrait of a woman with flowers before a red curtain, signed and dated A. Faistauer 1922, oil on canvas, 92 x 64.6 cm, framed, (K)

Provenance: Wienerroither und Kohlbacher, Vienna
Private Ownership, Upper Austria

Faistauer sent works to the Viennese Secession in March 1922. In my published review of the time, I wrote, “Anton Faistauer, who for some years has been the most mature and most gifted of the young generation, approaches ever more in his art that which is essential. His four life-size female nudes, which articulate the main wall of the large exhibition hall, exhibit his intensified, chosen allegiance to the ingenious contrapuntist of German monumental painting, Hans von Marées. This is not only evident in the paintings’ formal aspects, but also in the artist’s strange, eerie impasto style of paint application, which, when seen from an appropriate distance, turns out to be extremely finely shaded with a charming, vivid movement of planes and spatial saturation.” In summer 1922 Faistauer undertook an extended trip to Switzerland. He made portraits in Montreux and Geneva. In Basel, an encounter with works by Holbein was for him an exhilarating experience of profound urgency and long-lasting intensity...
Arthur Roessler, Der Maler Anton Faistauer, Wiener Volksbuchverlag 1947