Ferdinand Brunner

Ferdinand Brunner was born in Vienna on May 1, 1870 and began his artistic training in the studios of the scene painters of the royal court, A. Brioschi, H. Burghart and J. Kautsky. From 1891 to 1896, he studied landscape painting with Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and already received numerous awards and grants during these years, which made it possible for him to spend a long time in Italy in 1896/97. From 1901 onwards, he was a member of the artists' association of the Vienna Künstlerhaus and henceforth exhibited regularly. in 1904 and 1907 he took part in the major international art exhibitions in Düsseldorf and later also in the Munich Glass Palace. His landscape motifs, which are mostly to be found in Upper and Lower Austria, but also in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, are limited to those essential atmospheric elements that he carefully extracted from what he saw. Brunner artistically stands for a position that, based on Austrian mood impressionism at the end of the 19th century, was strongly influenced by symbolist trends and formally by Viennese Secession art. His characteristic, atmospheric conception of the landscape, in its reduced form, ultimately anticipates elements of the New Objectivity. He has received several awards for his artistic achievements; among other things, he received the Great Golden State Medal for the painting „Rushing Clouds" in 1910 and the Gustav Figdor Prize in 1935. Brunner died in Vienna on November 30, 1945.