August Rieger
The following artworks are for sale
- 16
- 15
Rieger August Fruit still life with philodendron 1932
Biography
The artist was born August Vorhauer in Vienna in 1886. In his youth, his painterly talent was not encouraged by his parents, so that he had to suppress his talent and became a tax official. Since the will and urge to paint finally prevailed, he chose the pseudonym "August Rieger" in order to be able to create unhindered in his free time. Although the quiet and introverted artist did not attend an academy, connoisseurs and collectors soon became aware of his work. His first sales encouraged him to resign from the service in 1923, in order to be able to devote himself unhindered to painting from then on. He became a highly regarded depictor of the Viennese suburbs, from Pötzleinsdorf, where he lived, to Grinzing, Sievering, Neustift and Neuwaldegg, to the Praterauen and the Lobau. Around Vienna he painted in Schwechat, Klosterneuburg, Perchtoldsdorf and especially liked the Vienna Woods. August Rieger always captured his landscapes, still lifes and interiors in masterful lighting, everything bathed in sunny brightness, with an expressive brushstroke and boldly placed landscape or figural accents. In his best works, August Rieger equaled his great model Carl Moll in the immediacy and colorfulness of his depiction. Albert Paris Gütersloh wrote about August Rieger: "He has learned only from the genius loci, he shows the Impressionist life in a drop of Danube water, and with such naturally localized boldness of brush or colored pencil stroke, as if he had learned from Camille Pissarro, Édouard Vuillard or Armand Guillaumin, the trembling moment-shoot-and-meet..."
Works by August Rieger, which appear all too rarely on the art market, are highly valued today and can be found, among others, in the collection of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, the Wien Museum, the Leopold Museum, in the Albertina Graphic Collection, as well as in important private collections in Austria and abroad.