Biography
Gerhardt Frankl (b. Vienna, Austria – d. Vienna 1965) initially studied chemistry before pursuing an art career. He was primarily self-taught although he spent several months in Nötsch im Gailtal, Carinthia, Austria with the Expressionist painter Anton Kolig (1886-1950) in the summers of 1920 and 1921. From 1922 he travelled in North Africa and widely across Europe and held several exhibitions, showing the in the influence of Paul Cezanne, in particular. In 1930 the Munich Pinakothek bought an oil landscape of his and the art historian Hans Tietz wrote a monograph cataloguing Frankl’s etchings. He was exiled in England from 1938, finally returning to Vienna with his wife in 1947, where they were accommodated temporarily in the Lower Belvedere. He participated in the Venice and São Paulo Biennales and the Pittsburgh Triennale an in 1961 the Austrian president granted him the title of Professor.
The Upper Belvedere in Vienna held a Masterpieces in Focus : Gerhart Frankl – Restless (2015/16) exhibition after a bequest of works by him from the collector Peter Parzer in 2012 and after several paintings of his were donated subsequent to the dissolution of the Gerhart Frankl Memorial Trust (originally based in London), according to his wife Christine’ will, which resulted in the Belvedere having the largest collection of his work. There have been two exhibitions devoted to Frankl in England since his death, at the Hayward Gallery, London, organised by the Arts Council in 1970, and another at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in 1997.
