LEOPOLD MUSEUM RECEIVES EXTENSIVE FRANZ HAGENAUER DONATION

16.01.2025

The Family of Entrepreneurs Breinsberg Donates 139 Eminent Works by the Ground-Breaking Metal Sculptor to the Leopold Museum

The donation of this collection of exquisite artworks, compiled over decades, significantly expands the Leopold Museum’s Hagenauer holdings. Thanks to this gift, the museum is now home to the world’s most extensive and most eminent collection of works by Franz Hagenauer (1906–1986), this “designer among sculptors”. “The heads made from chased metal he created from the late 1930s onwards, which he often reduced to mere ovoids, are among the most radical Modernist forays in Austrian art of the interwar period”, explains the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger. Already back in 2022, the Leopold Museum dedicated a comprehensive, long overdue retrospective to the artist, featuring more than 170 exhibits. The majority of the loans came from the collection of Monika and Erich Breinsberg. Currently, select heads and torsi by Franz Hagenauer are on display as part of the permanent presentation From Expressionism to New Objectivity on level 0.

“The wealth of sculptures and design objects, compiled by the passionate collector Erich Breinsberg over more than four decades, is not only secured in its entirety at the Leopold Museum but also made permanently accessible to art historical research and the public. This incredibly generous donation represents an extraordinary act of maecenatic dedication on behalf of the Breinsberg family, and is considered one of the most significant gifts the Leopold Museum has received in its more recent history, filling us with profound gratitude”, emphasizes Hans-Peter Wipplinger.

“FRANZ HAGENAUER shaped a fascinating era of Modernism. His singular works should be there for many people to enjoy in the future. It feels right to entrust the next stage of this journey to the Leopold Museum”, according to Erich Breinsberg.

“Giving Shape to Life”

Franz Hagenauer studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts under Franz Čižek, as well as leading artists of the time, including the eminent architect and designer Josef Hoffmann and the sculptor Anton Hanak, who provided Hagenauer with a well-founded education. This culminated in his participation at the age of 19 in the 1925 exhibition Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. His encounter with the avant-garde of the time had a decisive impact on the young artist. His sculptures made from chased metal were inspired by Art Deco, Art Africain, neo-Classicism and the Bauhaus. Franz Hagenauer’s professed aim was to “give shape to life”.

Looking Beyond the Regional Context

Hagenauer’s oeuvre followed on from the desire for innovation and high quality standards of Viennese artisan craftwork around 1900. As a young man, the metal artist studied under Dagobert Peche, one of the protagonists of the Wiener Werkstätte, whose designs feature in the Leopold Museum’s current Backhausen exhibition (on display until 9th March 2025).

Hans-Peter Wipplinger highlights the international dimension of Franz Hagenauer’s oeuvre, an artist who “invariably propelled by a non-purposive creative drive, looked far beyond the regional context already in the 1920s. Early Paris Modernism, neo-Classicism, the Bauhaus and Art Deco provided him with manifold possibilities to formulate his artistic ideas, which were ultimately aimed at achieving an absolute purification of form”.

Hagenauer created a fascinating spectrum of artworks over six decades. His participations in the Milan Triennial in 1930 and the Venice Biennale in 1934 mark early stages of his success. Following the death of his brother, he took over the family workshop in Vienna’s Neubau district, which had been founded by his father Carl Hagenauer, from 1956. From 1962, he taught at the Academy of Applied Arts, and in the 1970s, exported his works to the US thanks to the revival of Art Deco. His oeuvre, which was rich in experiments, has so far been the subject of two extensive museum presentations, one at the MAK (in 1971) and one at the Leopold Museum (in 2022).

Unification of Two Eminent Franz Hagenauer Collections

Along with the Leopold Museum’s founder Rudolf Leopold, who was an avid collector of Hagenauer’s works, it was especially the Breinsberg family who, over four decades, managed to compile the most eminent collection of the artist’s sculptures and design objects. Erich Breinsberg decided to integrate his exceptional collection into the Hagenauer holdings at the Leopold Museum, in order to create the most substantial Franz Hagenauer collection in the world. Thanks to the donation made by Erich and Monika Breinsberg, these two eminent Hagenauer collections could now be united at the Leopold Museum.

The Publication on the Donation

Thanks to the support of the car dealership Autohaus Liewers, it has been possible to issue a new publication based on the catalogue that accompanied the 2022 retrospective at the Leopold Museum. With a novel design concept and extra information added to the original exhibition catalogue, this volume affords an overview of the entire artistic range of Hagenauer’s oeuvre, and provides a foundation for his important life’s work to be presented in international exhibitions. Owing to the donation, the existing bilingual catalogue (German/English) on Franz Hagenauer’s oeuvre was completely revised and is now available in this extended edition titled Franz Hagenauer. A Singular Position of Modernism. The Breinsberg Collection, edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, with essays by Erich Breinsberg, Maria-Luise Jesch, Marco Antonio Ricci and Ivan Ristić, as well as a foreword by Hans-Peter Wipplinger. The 304-page publication, featuring 169, partly full-page color illustrations and 53 black-and-white illustrations, was published with Walther and Franz König publishers, Cologne. The book is available for 24.90 euros at the Leopold Museum Shop.

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