Wilhelm Thöny

Wilhelm Thöny was born in Graz on 10 February 1888. From 1908 to 1912, he studied at the Munich Academy. As a member of the Munich Secession he met Alfred Kubin and remained in close contact with him throughout his life. During the First World War, he was sent to the front as a war artist. Thöny was one of the first members of the Graz Secession. Following a brief period in Paris in 1929, Thöny painted his first large oil painting "Ile de la Cité". Fascinated by the world’s modern metropolises, Thöny left Graz for Paris, where his style changed dramatically while living there between 1931 and 1938. In the early days of autumn, he was always drawn to the Côte d’Azur and it was here that he painted his most important works from this period. Thöny first experienced Manhattan in the summer of 1933 and was impressed. He even created oil and watercolour paintings of New York while already being back in Paris. Thöny was awarded the gold medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1937. In 1938 he left Paris and emigrated to New York, where he struggled with feelings of isolation. A fire at a New York warehouse in 1948 destroyed about a thousand of his works. Thöny died in New York a year later on 1 May 1949.