Fritz Aigner (July 13, 1930 – January 9, 2005) was an Austrian

graphic artist A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published me ...

and painter.

Biography

Aigner studied at the

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (german: link=no, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien) is a public art school in Vienna, Austria. History The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was founded in 1692 as a private academy modelled on the Accademia di Sa ...

from 1947 to 1952. In 1952 he won an Austrian state fine arts prize for his artwork ''Die Klage des verlorgenen Sohnes''. He worked later as an artist in Spain, Ireland, London and his hometown,

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital ...

. Aigner's work was overtly influenced by that of

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally co ...

, notably in his oil painting ''Rembrandts Trick mit dem Licht''. He was nicknamed "the Rembrandt of Linz". His artwork often featured dark, acherontic and apocalyptic scenes with allusions to society and well-known society figures. After his death an Austrian journalist described Aigner as "an artist who dealt with the conflict areas eros and religion and between surrealism, realism and fantastic realism. Even allusions to the border of caricature can be found in his work." Aigner's first marriage to the

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only t ...

artist Auguste Kronheim ended in divorce and in 1969 he married Helga Aigner, with whom he had six children. He had exhibitions with three of his sons, Paul Florian, Matthias Claudius and Lukas Johannes Aigner, who also became artists. He died at the age of 74 in the Wagner-Jauregg Hospital in

Selected works

*''Amerikaner'' *''Sauregurkenzeit'' *''Orpheus und Eurydike'' *''Kannibalismus an einem Dichter'' *''Selbstporträt mit doppelten Augen'' *''Zachers Requiem für Oskar Schimonek''

Exhibitions

The Nordico Museum in Linz, Aigner's hometown, scheduled an exhibition of his work for the period September 29, 2008, to January 11, 2009, with the title "Child Prodigy and Painting Machine". A book with the same title was released in conjunction with the exhibition.

References

External links

Aignerart.atGalerie LehnerNordico Museum
1930 births 2005 deaths 20th-century Austrian painters 20th-century Austrian male artists Austrian male painters 21st-century Austrian painters 21st-century Austrian male artists Academy of Fine Arts Vienna alumni {{Austria-artist-stub