Skip to content
ONLINECOLLECTION

Self-Portrait, c. 1930

Leopold Museum,
Vienna © Bildrecht,
Vienna 2022
Oil on fibreboard
60×50.8 cm

Artists

  • Josef Dobrowsky

    (Karlovy Vary 1889–1964 Tullnerbach)

Currently on display at EG
The Viennese painter Josef Dobrowsky (1889–1964) is among the most important artists of the interwar period and is considered an important protagonist of modern painting in Austria. In the 1920s he turned to the Old Masters, studying the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/1530–1569) und Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), as one look at Dobrowsky’s Self-Portrait reveals: the painter turns his face diagonally out of the picture; light falls from the left onto one half of the face, letting the other sink into shadow. The highly arched eyebrows could signify surprise, or skepticism, too. Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) also turn towards the public with a similar facial expression in some of their self-portraits.

Object data

Artist/author
  • Josef Dobrowsky
Title
Self-Portrait
Date
c. 1930
Art movement
Expressionism
Category
Painting
Material​/technique
Oil on fibreboard
Dimensions
60×50.8 cm
Signature
Monogrammed and wrongly dated lower right: JD 1956
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna, Inv. 20
Inventory access
Contributed to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994
Conservation patron
Friedrich Jelinek, Walter Kronich, Kathrin Kronich
Keywords

If you have further information on this object, please contact us.

Provenance

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

For provenance related information, please contact us.