Eugen von Kahler
Street in the Orient
Artist
Eugen von Kahler
(1882, Praha - 1911, Praha), German
Original Title
Street in the Orient
Date1909
Mediumoil on canvas pasted into the cardboard
Dimensions 27 × 34 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionEugen von Kahler was a Czech-German artist of Jewish origins. Born into a wealthy and culturally oriented Prague-based family, he was able to spend a significant portion of his life travelling around European metropoles as well as attending health retreats in North Africa. Typical of his painterly style is an unbounded use of color inspired by German expressionism and French fauvism as well as his experience of the exotic environment of the Arabic world. His modernism-oriented painting career was cut short by his premature death from tuberculosis in 1911. Von Kahler’s imaginative, orientally themed expressionism, with its emphasis on the fantastic and the emotional, is divergent from the Czech expressionist-oriented art group Osma, demonstrating the diverse composition of the art scene at this time.
A Street in the Orient (1909) was likely painted during von Kahler’s journey to Tunisia and Algeria at the end of 1909. It depicts a busy urban promenade with bourgeoning vegetation. The thick, concise brushstrokes on a light background create an effect of intense lighting typical of the subtropical location and evidence an enchantment with the exotic world and its novel sensory stimuli.
Eugen von Kahler (1882, Prague – 1911, Prague) initially attended private drawing lessons from Heinrich Jakesch in Prague in 1881. He subsequently moved to Munich, where he studied at the private painting school of Heinrich Knirr from 1901 to 1903, before spending two years at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in the studio of Franz von Stuck (1903–1905). Following his studies, he shortly lived in Berlin before moving to Paris for two years in the autumn of 1906. In 1907, his work was shown at the spring exhibition of the Munich Secession and at the Salon d’atonome in Paris. During his time in Munich, von Kahler developed ties with Georges Kars, Hans Purrmann, Albert Weisgerber and Vasilij Kandinsky. These connections helped him feature as a guest in the group exhibitions of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (1910) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911). His first solo exhibition was held at the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in 1911, but von Kahler was unable to attend due to medical issues. His first posthumous exhibition in Czechoslovakia only took place in 1931 at the Rudolfinum in Prague. The Von Kahler works purchased by German public collections in the pre-war period were largely lost between 1933 and 1945, when they were removed from these collections due to ideological and racially discriminatory reasons as part of the battle against so-called degenerate art. The most recent exhibition reviewing von Kahler’s work was held at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb in 2006.
A Street in the Orient (1909) was likely painted during von Kahler’s journey to Tunisia and Algeria at the end of 1909. It depicts a busy urban promenade with bourgeoning vegetation. The thick, concise brushstrokes on a light background create an effect of intense lighting typical of the subtropical location and evidence an enchantment with the exotic world and its novel sensory stimuli.
Eugen von Kahler (1882, Prague – 1911, Prague) initially attended private drawing lessons from Heinrich Jakesch in Prague in 1881. He subsequently moved to Munich, where he studied at the private painting school of Heinrich Knirr from 1901 to 1903, before spending two years at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in the studio of Franz von Stuck (1903–1905). Following his studies, he shortly lived in Berlin before moving to Paris for two years in the autumn of 1906. In 1907, his work was shown at the spring exhibition of the Munich Secession and at the Salon d’atonome in Paris. During his time in Munich, von Kahler developed ties with Georges Kars, Hans Purrmann, Albert Weisgerber and Vasilij Kandinsky. These connections helped him feature as a guest in the group exhibitions of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (1910) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911). His first solo exhibition was held at the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in 1911, but von Kahler was unable to attend due to medical issues. His first posthumous exhibition in Czechoslovakia only took place in 1931 at the Rudolfinum in Prague. The Von Kahler works purchased by German public collections in the pre-war period were largely lost between 1933 and 1945, when they were removed from these collections due to ideological and racially discriminatory reasons as part of the battle against so-called degenerate art. The most recent exhibition reviewing von Kahler’s work was held at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb in 2006.
