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Surging Soldiers, 1915

Leopold Museum,
Vienna
Lithograph on paper
69.5×91 cm

Artists

  • Albin Egger-Lienz

    (Stribach 1868–1926 St. Justina)

Currently on display at UG1
Full of energy and assured of victory, their weapons poised, a phalanx of powerful soldiers surges towards the beholder with bounding strides. In their simplified plasticity the figures appear devoid of individuality and to be moving in unison, like an incarnation of the mechanisms of the first industrialized war of mass destruction in the history of mankind, the First World War. In contrast to his later oeuvre, in which the graphic artist and painter Albin Egger-Lienz (1868–1926) addressed the oppressive consequences of the War, such as pain, suffering and death, and transferred them into monumental and expressive forms, his monochrome 1915 lithograph Surging Soldiers conveys a war-affirming pathos. This ambivalence is further evidenced by Egger-Lienz’s painting War, created shortly afterwards, which shows the same subject but with the addition of fallen soldiers.

MH, 2021

Object data

Artist/author
  • Albin Egger-Lienz
Title
Surging Soldiers
Date
1915
Art movement
Naturalism I Realism, Expressionism
Category
Graphic work
Material​/technique
Lithograph on paper
Dimensions
69.5×91 cm
Signature
Signed and dated in the stone lower left: A. EGGER LIENZ 1915; signed lower right: A. Egger-Lienz
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna, Inv. 3039
Inventory access
Contributed to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994
Selection of Reference works
  • Trotzdem Kunst! Österreich 1914-1918, hrsg. von Elisabeth Leopold/Ivan Ristić u.a., Wien 2014 (Ausst-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 09.05.2014-15.09.2014).
  • Albin Egger-Lienz: 1868-1926, hrsg. von Gert Amann/Michael Fuhr, Wien 2008 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 15.02.2008–29.05.2008).
  • Wilfried Kirschl: Albin Egger-Lienz: 1868-1926; das Gesamtwerk; [Monographie in zwei Bänden], Wien 1996.
Catalogue raisonne
  • Kirschl 1996: DG 8
Keywords
group of peopleriflerunningwaste land/no man's landmouth slightly openmilitary clothing and other equipment (uniforms/cap/helmet)

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Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i
Dr. Rudolf Leopold, Wien (o.D.);
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Wien (1994).

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group of peopleriflerunningwaste land/no man's landmouth slightly openmilitary clothing and other equipment (uniforms/cap/helmet)