Leopold Hauer was born on July 15, 1896 in Vienna, the son of the innkeeper Franz Hauer. His father was an important art collector and gave him an early insight into the work of well-known artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Albin Egger-Lienz and Egon Schiele. After the death of his father in 1914, Leopold Hauer took the famous Viennese restaurant “Griechenbeisl”, which is in the first district of Vienna and known as a popular meeting point for artists at the time, over.
After his military service in the First World War, he started studying painting at the Vienna Academy with Josef Jungwirth and Karl Sterrer and soon achieved success with his landscape and flower paintings. His love of nature, as well as his extensive trips all over Europe influenced his preferred motifs: landscapes, architecture and still lifes. In 1928 Hauer became a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. In the early 1930s, he worked as a dramaturge and director for movies, but returned to painting in 1936. In 1949 he founded the Künstlerhaus Kino, which he headed as artistic director until 1966. In 1961 he received the Austrian badge of honour for science and art. His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions and are in the possession of the great Austrian museums, Albertina, Austrian Gallery Belvedere and Leopold Museum.
Leopold Hauer died on November 2, 1984 in Lengenfeld, where he had been living since the 1970s.
