The painter Artur Nikodem was born in Trento in South Tyrol in 1870. According to his own statements, he attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts against the will of his parents, where he was a student of Franz von Defreggers and Wilhelm von Kaulbach. In 1890 Nikodem was released from military service at his own request and returned to his parents in Trento. He there joined the postal service in 1891. In 1893 he moved to Merano, and from that point on the painter's first artistic activities became comprehensible. He joined the "Meraner Künstlerbund" and was regularly represented with his pictures at its exhibitions. In 1908 he and his family moved to Innsbruck, where he stayed until the end of his life.
Nikodem's work is an important part of the Tyrolean modernism of the interwar period, which is shaped by the examination of the new trends in the Munich art scene and is still attached to the tradition of Tyrolean landscape painting. Arthur Nikodem has been one of the most successful and renowned Tyrolean artists since the 1920s. During the National Socialist era, his art was declared to be “degenerate”, and after the connection, the artist lived very secluded and without any opportunity of exhibiting his work. He died in Innsbruck in 1940.
