WILHELM THÖNY (Graz 1888 - 1949 New York), The Young and the Eldery

WILHELM THÖNY
(Graz 1888 - 1949 New York)
The Young and the Eldery
indian ink/paper, 21,7 x 28,4 cm
signed W. Thöny
Provenance: private property Vienna

ESTIMATE € 2.000 - 3.000
START € 2.000

Austrian painter, graphic artist, etcher and illustrator of the 20th century, important representative of Austrian modernism. 1908 to 1912 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with Angelo Jank and Gabriel von Hackl. Also training in singing and playing the piano. Co-founder of the Munich Secession, lifelong acquaintance with Alfred Kubin. As a one-year volunteer in World War I, he created portrait studies and illustrations as a regimental painter. 1923 co-founder of the Graz Secession. 1925 Marries Thea Herrmann-Trautner, daughter of the American painter Frank S. Herrmann, sister of the painter and caricaturist Eva Herrmann. 1929 first stay in Paris, lived in Paris from 1931 to 1938. 1938 Emigrated to New York with his Jewish wife. 1948 Destruction of most of his works in a fire in a warehouse in New York. Diverse themes and techniques, landscapes and above all cityscapes of large cities such as Paris and New York. The genre scenes also show engagement with Advard Munch and August Macke.

Wilhelm Thöny's caricature-like drawing titled "Jung und Alt" is one of many sketchy, light-handed works on paper by the artist, in which he gives us an insight into his understanding of humor, which is characterized by irony. The present scene does not necessarily have to have been intended as an allegory, but due to the ironic exaggeration of the depiction, this interpretation nevertheless suggests itself. The young woman with a short dress and a daring back neckline, with a cigarette deliberately casually balanced on her lower lip, looks down provocatively at the much smaller, plump woman, who routinely carries a basket in the crook of her arm, so is obviously more used to working than to smoking in a youthful, casual manner , and looks back rather grimly. What is meant here is not the simple comparison of the life phases young and old, which makes the inevitability of aging the subject of consideration, but the constant generational conflict, which is anything but a new topic. The complaint can already be read on a 5,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet: "Young people no longer respect their age, deliberately appear unkempt, contemplate overthrow, show no willingness to learn and reject accepted values." Temporally closer to Thöny Kurt Tucholsky, writing in 1931: "The different ages of man mistake each other for different races: old people have usually forgotten that they were young, or they forget that they are old, and young people never realize that they can grow old. But it was only after the Second World War that the teenager, starting in the USA, became a subject who was actually acting and not just viewed with suspicion by the elderly. The main reason was by no means rock'n'roll, but the increasing commercialization and in this context the fact that modern marketing recognized teenagers as a target group.

PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° in the catalog), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13% is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.