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Henry Koerner | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 28, 1915 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | 4 July 1991(1991-07-04) (aged 75) St. Pölten, Austria |
| Spouse | Joan Marlene Frasher (February 29, 1932 - September 12, 2013) |
| Children | Joseph Leo Koerner (born June 17, 1958) Stephanie Beth Koerner (born July 22, 1954) |
Henry Koerner (bornHeinrich Sieghart Körner; August 28, 1915 – July 4, 1991) was an Austrian-born American painter and graphic designer best known for his earlyMagical Realist works of the late 1940s and his portrait covers forTime magazine.
Born in theLeopoldstadt District of Vienna to non-observantJewish parents Leo Körner (1879–1942) and Feige ("Fanny") Dwora Körner née Mager (1887–1942), Koerner attended the Realgymnasium Vereinsgasse. His aunt on his father's side, was the painter and printmaker Sophie Körner (later Sophie Figdor). Studying graphic design at Vienna's Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (1934–36), Henry Cover worked in the studio of Viktor Theodor Slama, designing posters and book jackets. FollowingHitler'sannexation of Austria in 1938, he escaped (by air September 16) to Italy (Venice andMilan), in 1939 to the United States, settling in New York. In 1940 he married Viennese-born Fritzi Apfel.[1]
Employed as a commercial artist in Maxwell Bauer Studios inManhattan, he achieved initial success as a poster artist, receiving first prize from theAmerican Society of the Control of Cancer Poster Competition and two first prizes from the National War Poster Competition. In 1943, theOffice of War Information hired Koerner in its Graphics Division in New York, where he worked alongside artistsBen Shahn, Bernard Perlin, andDavid Stone Martin. Shahn's pictorial style, along with the photography ofWalker Evans and GermanNeue Sachlichkeit painters (e.g.,Otto Dix), inspired Koerner's painting, which began with a rendering of his family home in Vienna (My Parents I, 1944).
Drafted into theU.S. Army, he was ordered in 1944 to the Graphics Division of theOffice of Strategic Services inWashington, D.C., where he made war posters, includingSave Waste Fats andSomeone Talked, the latter winning an award from theMuseum of Modern Art. Shipped toLondon, he documented, in pen and ink sketches and photographs, everyday life during wartime. AfterVE Day (8 May 1945), Koerner was reassigned toGermany, working in Wiesbaden and Berlin, and sketching defendants at theNuremberg trials.
Discharged from the army in 1946, Koerner returned to Vienna to ascertain that his parents, his brother Kurt (b. 1913) and sister-in-law (Olga Körner, b. 1920), his seven aunts and uncles, and all but two of his cousins, had been deported and killed. Later research revealed that his parents had been murdered upon arrival at June 15, 1942 at Maly Trostenets, outside Minsk. Photographs taken by the artist during his April 1946 return to Vienna exhibited were exhibited posthumously in exhibitions in Vienna,Naples, Florida andColumbus, Ohio.
InBerlin, having joined on March 27, 1946 the Graphics Division of theU.S. Military Government, he painted his first major works, including My Parents II (Curtis Galleries, Inc., Minneapolis),The Skin of Our Teeth (Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska), and Mirror of Life (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).[2] These paintings were exhibited in 1947, to international acclaim, in a one-person show at Berlin's Haus am Waldsee—the first exhibition of American modern art in post-war Germany and the first and for many years the only art exhibition in Germany to reflect on the holocaust.[3] Auschwitz had been liberated less than two years earlier, and a generation later artists would base their undertaking on the exploration of problems of historical trauma, memory, and amnesia, American art critics complained of what they perceived as Koerner's unwarranted "bitterness" and "hysterical I-told-you-so path," advising him to look forward, not back.[4]
Returning to New York later that year, Koerner exhibited the Berlin works in an exhibition at Midtown Galleries, which represented him until 1964.Life magazine wrote of the show: "No new artist in years has been accorded the sudden, unanimous praise received by Koerner."[5] Critics associated his work that of other so-calledMagic, (or Symbolic) Realists such asPaul Cadmus andGeorge Tooker.[6][7]
Inspired by the structural logic ofGiotto's frescoes in theArena Chapel, Koerner created in 1948–49 a new series of paintings—all in the same scale and viewpoint and focused on the American scene—that absorbed fantastical elements into the fabric of everyday life. The artist took some inspiration from the handcrafted, vernacular surrealism ofConey Island ghost rides and fun houses, which he painted as uncanny conduits to thePrater amusement park of his childhood home in Leopoldstadt.[8] In 1949 Koerner work received the Temple Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine arts.[9]
From 1952 to 1953, Koerner was Artist-in-Residence at Pennsylvania College for Women (nowChatham University) inPittsburgh, PA, where he met his second wife, Joan Marlene Frasher (born 1932, Escanaba, Michigan), a violinist and undergraduate music major at the College. During this period, Koerner changed radically his style, technique, and process. Where before he had painted in his studio from drawings and preliminary studies, creating works in a highly finished style, evocative of Renaissance painters, now he worked solely from life, and in a broader style evocative, in its palette and approach to brushwork, ofPaul Cézanne. He settled in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, which through its geography of hills and bridges, and its long-established Jewish community, reminded him of Vienna. He used friends, family, and students as models. Although a well-known personality in Pittsburgh, Koerner's pictures—enigmatic, comical, and often monumental in scale—baffled many art critics.[10]
From 1955 to 1967, Koerner painted forty-six portrait covers for Time magazine. Because he refused to work from photographs, all Koerner's sitters, includingMaria Callas,John F. Kennedy,Robert F. Kennedy,Paul Getty,Jimmy Clark, andBarbra Streisand, posed for many hours for their portraits, usually during the most eventful times of their lives; but this method gave their likenesses an immediacy meant to outdo photographs, which were increasingly featured on Time's covers as it confronted an ever more competitive market. From 1966 on, annual trips to Vienna shifted Koerner art from American subjects, which had preoccupied him since about 1948, to ones mingling the landscapes and people of Vienna and Pittsburgh. The center of Koerner's output were large-scaleallegorical paintings made up of sixteen canvases assembled in four rows of four.[11] In 1965 he was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1967. He received the 1986 Hazlett Memorial Award (now Pennsylvania's Governor's Award for the Arts).[12]
Koerner produced many thousands[specify] of works in his career. In the 1980s, he worked mostly inwatercolor, pressing the medium to monumental tasks and formats, including three monumental 16-panel paintings executed on heavy watercolor paper stretched like canvas over wooden frames.
During the last decade of his life, Koerner painted again mainly in oils, favoring a new, square format, and simplifying his motifs. In these works "Koerner condense[d] his experience as aplein-air painter of uncanny views."[13] Increasing interest in émigré artists brought his work new critical notice in Austria and the States.[14] After his death, his work was shown in a major retrospective in Vienna (1997) and an exhibition of his early work at theFrick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh (2003).
Koerner died in 1991 inSt. Pölten, Austria, following complications from a hit-and-run accident on his bicycle in theWachau in Austria. He is buried beside his wife in Pittsburgh's Homewood[15] Cemetery. His son Joseph Koerner is a professor of history of art atHarvard University and a documentary film-maker. His daughter Stephanie Koerner is a lecturer at Liverpool University's School of Architecture.
Koerner's art is represented in many public collections including theWhitney Museum of American Art, theMetropolitan Museum of Art, theSheldon Museum of Art, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere,Wien Museum,Yale University Art Gallery,Columbus Museum of Art,Carnegie Museum of Art, andHarvard Art Museums. My Parents II figures inFrank O'Hara's 1950 "Poem" (The flies are getting slower now): "Here, as in the/gallery, Henry Koerner’s parents/ say goodbye forever." Yale University's Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, opened in 2003, was named in the artist's honor.[16] The Center celebrated it 20th-Anniversary Rededication with an exhibition of works by Koerner, mostly donated newly to the Center. In 2019 Henry Koerner Hall was opened at Bard College Berlin.[17][18] Koerner's first painting (My Parents I) features prominently in the 2019 filmThe Burning Child.[19] TheHenry Koerner House in Pittsburgh, which Koerner used as his residence and studio, was named aHistoric Landmark by thePittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in 2021[20] and was added to theNational Register of Historic Places in 2023.[21]
