Newsletter
Edition 14, March – June 2005

Content

Editorial
Arnold Schönberg, the Painter
Friends of the Arnold Schönberg Center
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Editorial

It’s that time again! Every five years we transform the Arnold Schönberg Center and present a large special exhibition using all the rooms. This year it is “Arnold Schönberg, the Painter.” When we carried out such a massive project for the first time in 2000, we were overwhelmed by the public response. More than 30,000 visitors came to the exhibition around the subject of the relationship between Schönberg and the painter
Wassily Kandinsky. The present show moves far beyond this theme and presents Arnold Schönberg as a painter of his time, who, together with Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl, Oskar
Kokoschka, and Max Oppenheimer, made a significant contribution to the Viennese cultural scene. The special exhibition “Arnold Schönberg, the Painter” together with the publication of a complete catalogue of Schönberg’s pictorial works, form a climax of our Foundation’s work. Seven years after the opening of the Arnold Schönberg Center in March 1998, the foundation has collated the results of research in the archives, in symposia and seminars and from more than 50 exhibitions and participation in exhibitions in Europe and the USA. Never before has such a complete show of Schönberg’s works been presented, particularly placing on view for the first time, paintings recently discovered in private hands as well as the 1910 Winter Scene, appeared last summer in Berlin, which had long been considered lost without trace.
It is thanks to our friend and patron, Commercial Councillor Rudolfine Steindling that the foundation was able to acquire this important work. The paintings and drawings of Arnold Schönberg, the composer, music theorist, painter, teacher, and mentor of modernism in music, are an integral part of his creative output, without which the totality of his work cannot properly be understood. As a result of many years of scientific analysis of Schönberg’s visual oeuvre at the ASC archive, a Catalogue raisonné in two volumes will be presented at the opening of the exhibition. It contains a complete overview of Schönberg’s pictorial works, his related writings as well as his comments by important contemporaries. For the first time, Schönberg’s activities relating to exhibitions of his paintings together with contemporary media reaction to his pictorial works are documented, his paints analyzed and a new understanding of his painting technique, titles and dating of his works are presented.
Following on the founding of the Arnold Schönberg Center Private Foundation at the beginning of 1997, approximately 160 Schönberg paintings arrived in Europe on permanent loan from the heirs. This eased access to these works considerably
and we are extremely grateful to the Schoenberg family for this opportunity, as indeed we are to all other private and institutional lenders, whose exhibits make this exhibition possible. Supplementary sections will show Schönberg ephemera, such as playing cards, music manuscripts, and writings. Additionally, there will be documents and historical photographic material. A special section is dedicated to those works of the Austrian expressionist Richard Gerstl, which depict Arnold Schönberg, his wife Mathilde, his family, and other members of Schönberg’s circle; finally, a section containing contemporary portraits of Schönberg by Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, and Max Oppenheimer will round off the theme. An academic symposium on the subject of “Arnold Schönberg, the Painter” (September 2003) already served as preparation for the 2005 exhibition. The report appeares as “Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center.” Finally, an accompanying
academic and musical programme with concerts and lectures is planned, with a Calendar of Events. The current Newsletter No. 14 is a full-color special edition which, published in a different format, exclusively deals with the special exhibition. We would like to ask you to use the payment form enclosed with this Newsletter to cover expenses (€ 3). Newsletter No. 15 (Autumn 2005) will return to reports from the archives, from the Arnold Schönberg Research Center, and from the media. Thanks are due to the generous sponsors and donors and also to the international lenders of exhibits, without whom this exhibition and the Catalogue raisonné would never have come to fruition. They are the result of extraordinary financial and personal effort, recognized by the Board of the Foundation
and the whole staff. At this point, we also wish to recognize their contribution with deep gratitude. I cordially invite you, honored friends of the Arnold Schönberg Center, to use this opportunity to view Schönberg’s paintings and drawings and to visit the accompanying events.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Christian Meyer
Director


Arnold Schönberg, the Painter

In a handwritten note dating from 1934, Arnold Schönberg claimed that he began painting in 1906. His stage set sketches for the plays Superstition and Gothamites came much earlier, around 1900 and 1901 respectively. The first record we have of an “independent” work is the watercolor Day Break in Hoisen near Gmunden from August 1905. Between 1906 and 1909 – mostly during the summer months – portrait sketches and nature pieces were created. In January 1910 Arnold Schönberg and his family moved into a new apartment at number 113 Hietzinger Hauptstraße, located in Vienna’s 13th district.
In the months following this move, a series of self-portraits, portraits and nocturnes as well as “Impressions and Fantasies” – the majority of his paintings – were created.
As early as mid- June of 1910, Schönberg approached Carl Moll in his position as the “artistic director” of the H. O. Miethke Art Gallery in the Dorotheergasse in Vienna with a proposal for an exhibition of his works; but the plan for a sole exhibition in the leading and most prominent private gallery of the royal and imperial capital city would fail. It was at the Heller Art Gallery that Schönberg found a tried and tested alternative to the Miethke Gallery. Since establishing a book and art shop in 1905, Hugo Heller made a significant impact on Vienna’s cultural scene after 1900 through the introduction of novel business ideas, and the organization of author’s readings and concert events. In October 1910 he organized an exhibition with almost 40 paintings and drawings by Schönberg. Immediately after the show at the Heller Art Gallery, Schönberg was represented with some of his paintings at a sales exhibition by Paul Cassirer, who prepared the way for the Modernist movement in Berlin and who was the publisher of the periodical Pan. Following a number of sensational exhibitions and as a result of the growth of the company in Hamburg as well as in London and Amsterdam, Cassirer was able to make a considerable name for himself in art circles.
A Schönberg concert in the Munich Jahreszeitensaal in early 1911, where one of his self-portraits was exhibited, set the course for the friendship with Wassily Kandinsky, who came to the concert together with Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, Alexej von Jawlensky as well as Marianne von Werefkin. Approximately two weeks later Kandinsky, who at that time was a member of the “Neue Künstlervereinigung München” [“New Artists’ Association, Munich”], a forerunner to the “Blaue Reiter” group, for the first time contacted Schönberg, by the start of a correspondence between them to discuss theoretical and artistic points of contact. In June 1911 Kandinsky and Marc had come up with a plan to publish an art almanac with contributions from painters, writers of art books and musicians, it was to be named “Der Blaue Reiter.” Amongst those asked to contribute to the publication was Schönberg who was also asked to participate in the first
exhibition of the “Editors of the Blaue Reiter,” to be shown in two rooms at the Thannhauser Gallery in Munich between December 1911 and January 1912. Schönberg was represented with four works in the company of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, David and Wladimir Burljuk, Robert Delaunay, Eugen Kahler, Elisabeth Epstein, Gabriele Münter, and Jean Bloé Niestlé.
After the exhibition at the Thannhauser Gallery, Arnold Schönberg was invited by Albert Paris Gütersloh to exhibit his paintings in Budapest. In 1909 a new Art Society has been founded, the Müvészház (Artists’ Gallery). The Artists’ Association had at its disposal its own exhibition rooms, which showed primarily group exhibitions and small independent collections. The first exhibition at the Müvészház with exclusively international participation opened in January 1912. Contemporary works of the “Neukunst” [“New Art”] Group from Vienna established by Egon Schiele in 1909 were also to be shown. Robert Christian Andersen, Anton Kolig, Anton Faistauer, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Arnold Schönberg were exhibited there as representatives of the new Austrian art.
In 1911/12 Schönberg painted his last oil paintings. Up to the chronologically last of his works, which date from 1944, he painted sporadically and did not want to exhibit his works anymore. Schönberg declined on the basis of his general reluctance to exhibit, since he favored sticking to one “profession” and already had “two”: composing and teaching. The exhibition’s subdivision of approximately 150 out of 360 pictorial works into genres and groups of works follows the classification Arnold Schönberg himself used: self-portraits, impressions and fantasies, portraits and studies, caricatures, nature pieces, studies and figurines for stage works, as well as designs, games and bricolages and sketches. Historical documents and photographs as well as manuscripts and sources referring to the paintings and drawings in Schönberg’s legacy show hitherto unknown interrelations between his pictorial works, his biography and his music.

Therese Muxeneder


Friends of the Arnold Schönberg Center

The Friends of the Arnold Schönberg Center support the scholarly projects of our Foundation: research projects include the conservation and restoration of autograph manuscripts from the Schönberg legacy, the digitalization of tens of thousands
of pages of music and text manuscripts, as well as the Critical Complete Edition of the Writings of Arnold Schönberg. Also supported are the purchasing of letters, first editions and historical documents, and the distribution of information concerning Schönberg’s work and influence to interested parties of all ages and educational levels. Your membership provides you with many advantages: Friends receive the scholarly publications of the Arnold Schönberg Center ( JASC), reduced rates for subscription series and individual concerts, free admission to exhibitions, discounts on special shop articles, and updated information (Calendar of Events, Newsletter and brochures to exhibitions). In addition, each year we feature an exclusive, organized art tour. The minimum annual fee of € 75 as well as other donations in support of the scholarly projects of the Arnold Schönberg Center can be paid by means of the money order included in this Newsletter. We ask that Friends outside Austria pay by credit card. Both Austria and the United States offer tax exemptions for charitable gifts.

Arnold Schönberg Center, Information: Alena Salvini-Plawen
Tel.: (+43/1) 712 18 88-15, Fax: (+43/1) 712 18 88-88
direktion@schoenberg.at


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