MAX OPPENHEIMER
EXPRESSIONIST PIONEER

With the most comprehensive retrospective to date on the Vienna-born artist Max Oppenheimer (1885–1954), the Leopold Museum is inviting visitors to rediscover a significant yet almost forgotten oeuvre. The exhibition illustrates how radically the painter acquired his ever evolving and distinctive signature style, formulating a substantial contribution to modern art in the process.By the 1910s Oppenheimer was already a well-known artistic personality. While leading galleries and museums in Austria, Germany and Switzerland showcased exhibitions of his works, museum and private collections also included them in their inventory.

Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger
Curatorial Assistant and Projectcoordination: Aline Marion Steinwender

As an innovator, Oppenheimer was also at the forefront of many avant-garde movements. Together with Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, he was among the young artists who broke away from the painterly traditions of the Secession in a move that would prove pivotal for Austrian modernism and helped Austrian Expressionism to its breakthrough. Along with Paul Klee, Alfred Kubin, Schiele and others, he was an active member of the Munich artists’ group SEMA, which had its first exhibition at Galerie Thannhauser in 1912. He was also one of the first here in Austria to engage with Cubist imagery and Italian Futurism, incorporating their progressive conceptions of form into his work in his own idiosyncratic way. He was a co-initiator of the journal Die Aktion in 1911, for which he contributed numerous works in subsequent years, and a founding member of Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, the Dadaist association for which he also showed a number of works at its first exhibition at Galerie Coray in Zurich in 1917. It is also worth noting that, in his music-themed paintings, he was one of the first to work with elements of New Objectivity. Given all these innovative paths and, indeed, his successful career path, it is all the more surprising that the recognition Oppenheimer so clearly deserves has eluded him in the last few decades.

One reason may be his unsettled way of life and the fact that he relocated so many times as a result. While such a nomadic lifestyle was in part of his own volition, it was to a certain extent also brought about by two world wars and the ensuing phases of emigration. The fact that Oppenheimer lived and worked in many cities and countries also means that his works are widely scattered and that their whereabouts remain in part unknown to this day – insofar as they were not banned and subsequently burned as ‘degenerate art’ under the Nazi regime or destroyed in the chaos of war.

EARLY PORTRAITS

Through his participation in the Vienna Kunstschau exhibitions of 1908 and 1909 Oppenheimer came into contact with prominent representatives of Vienna’s art and cultural scene and portraited them. Oppenheimer’s artistic development towards a more expressive form manifested itself first and foremost in a reduced palette featuring somber tones reflective of a painting style committed to realism and a focus on capturing the essence of the individual sitter. Oppenheimer was therefore one of the first to experience and actively shape the turning point towards Expressionism, on the front line as it were.

The most expressive parts of the human body in psychological terms, i.e. the head and hands, became the focal point of his portraiture as he set about depicting the ‘human soul.’ Oppenheimer’s creative output was also influenced by the theosophical studies popular in the early 20th century insofar as they considered the aura of the individual. Indeed, the light apparent in the paintings seems to envelop the sitter’s body like an inner glow.

CHRISTIAN AND MYTHOLOGICAL MOTIFS

Around 1910, Max Oppenheimer began to deal with Christian iconography and created several works with corresponding motifs. He embedded the stories in his own visual language and often wove autobiographical elements into his compositions, clearly visible in the works Deposition from the Cross, Samson, Scourging and Lamentation.

A PASSION FOR MUSIC

One of Oppenheimer’s great passions was music, to which he had been exposed since childhood. The Hess Quartet, produced in 1914, was Oppenheimer’s first painting to be set in a music context; numerous other paintings on a musical theme would follow, right into old age.

The years spent in Switzerland in particular, between 1915 and 1924, saw an in-depth exploration of musical themes through the medium of painting. His main focus was on the depiction of acoustic phenomena, congenially expressed using both Futurist and New Objectivity stylistic devices.

BERLIN IN THE GOLDEN TWENTIES

As early as 1930,Oppenheimer created a first version of the chess match. At that time he had been living in Berlin again for several years and was soaking up the hustle and bustle of the big city. Berlin was the metropolis and the epitome of the Golden Twenties. However, Oppenheimer tried to capture the zeitgeist not only with the help of dancing couples or swinging jazz musicians, but also by depicting this strategic board game.

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