Paul Flora

Biography

Paul Flora was born on 29 June in Glurns in South Tyrol and moved to Innsbruck with his family at the age of five. He took drawing lessons from Max von Esterle at an early age and also tried his hand at etching for the first time. In order to avoid military service, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1942 to 1944. He was called up in 1944 and served in Italy, Hungary and Slovakia, where he was briefly captured by the US in 1945. After the war years, he returned to Innsbruck, where he worked as a freelance illustrator, caricaturist and graphic artist.
In 1948, he joined the Vienna Art Club around its president Albert Paris Gütersloh. From 1949, he began working as a cartoonist for various newspapers in Austria and Germany, including the Deutschländische Neue Zeitung, the Tiroler Wochenpost, the Tiroler Tageszeitung and Hamburg's Die Zeit. In 1950 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale and in 1956 at the Vienna Secession - in this year he also received the Austrian State Prize for Graphic Art and in 1985 the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Flora died on 15 May 2009 in Innsbruck.
Paul Flora's graphic work leads us into ironic and humorous dream worlds, often with historical references. With a wink, he places protagonists from not so distant times, such as Napoleon or Wagner, in bizarre, distorted scenes that play with the balance of power and greatness. The magnificent figures become mirror images of our existence; melancholically lost, helpless and insecure, in the midst of familiar circumstances - winter landscapes, Venice, the circus or the café become the settings for small and large everyday dramas.