(Linz 1910–2001)
Auf der Blumenwiese / On the flower meadow, signed, dated F. Fröhlich 1938, oil on plywood, 87 x 116 cm, framed

Label on the frame:
Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung 1938 im Haus der Deutschen Kunst zu München (Einlieferungsbuch 4465/Kiste 2916/Stoß 186)

In 1938 almost all of his early works in his studio in Dürnberg near Ottensheim were destroyed in a fire, except for the few ones that were stored elsewhere.

Provenance:
Family collection, Linz/Vienna – by the present owner’s grandfather

Only where man
transcends his own ego,
is he substantial, does he join in determining
the face of time, even to the smallest extent.

Fritz Fröhlich

In retrospect, Fritz Fröhlich’s military service was a time of idleness that prevented him from producing so-called party art:

“During military service, I was in a state of mental disturbance. Much though I hated military life, it protected me from a confrontation that I would not have been able to eschew at home. Under the existing political conditions, as a painter I would have had to manoeuvre between artistic decline, on the one hand, and fulfilling the cliché of art the State demanded, on the other. For me, that would have been unthinkable.”

Cf: Fritz Fröhlich, catalogue raisonné I, 2000