Emil Rizek

Biography

Emil Rizek, born in 1901, was actually supposed to join his father's company as an electrical engineer. Following his talent, he took painting lessons with Anton Hlavacek. A meeting with Carl Fahringer in 1923 paved the way for his future career and inspired Emil Rizek to undertake his first travels. The desire to travel to foreign countries was to accompany him for the rest of his life and took him to Indonesia, Japan, South Africa and Hawaii, among other places. It was in America that he met his first wife Dorothy Risdale Grove. Although he returned to his native Austria time and again, Emil Rizek initially gained artistic recognition and the opportunity to present his paintings to a wider audience mainly abroad. It was not until after the Second World War that he was able to create financial support for his family through employment and show his works at numerous exhibitions. In 1960, his oeuvre was honored in a major retrospective at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. He was subsequently awarded the title of professor. In 1965, Emil Rizek was awarded the Great Golden Medal of Honor by the Lower Austrian Art Association. His preferred place of residence in the last years of his life was East Frisia, where his urn was buried off the coast of the Wadden Sea after his death in 1988.
During his travels through Europe, it was primarily Holland and the “School of The Hague” - of which he later described himself as a member - that became important for the stylistic development of Emil Rizek's painting. This Dutch equivalent of French Impressionism was very much in keeping with Emil Rizek's painterly approach due to its more emotional and intuitive painting style. In The Hague, the lively tradition of the old masters was combined with the feeling for color, form and movement of the French Impressionists. In his choice of subjects from the working-class and peasant milieu, the artist is also in the continuity of Dutch genre painting and the great French painters of the late 19th century: these are the same subjects that Emil Rizek repeatedly takes up in his work - motifs from everyday life in the suburbs, the hustle and bustle in the streets, markets and squares, in the exotic Far East or in a modern European city.