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Salzburger Museum Carolino Augusteum - Medieninformation

Die zum Freundeskreis der Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie gehörende Illustratorin und Autorin Lisl Weil ist eine jener Künstlerinnen, die gezwungen waren in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus zu emigrieren. In Österreich fast vergessen, wurde sie in den USA zu einer der berühmtesten Kinderbuchautorinnen. Ein von ihr gestaltetes Mozart-Buch wurde von Dr. Ruth Kaltenegger und Mag. Christina Steinmetzer vom St. Gilgener Museum Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie in den USA wiederentdeckt und heim nach Salzburg geholt. Das Buch wird erstmals in Europa in deutscher Sprache aufgelegt.
 

Buchpräsentation

„Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756 – 1762“

Mozart im Exil – oder die Geschichte eines Kinderbuches

18. Mai 2006, 11 Uhr, Neue Residenz, Gloriensaal

Von links nach rechts: Direktor Dr. Erich Marx, Mag. Christina Steinmetzer, Dr. Ruth Kaltenegger, die junge Pianistin Sophie Riedler und Mag. Leni Zimmerebner

Vieles wurde über Mozart geschrieben, darunter auch einige Kinderbücher. Dieses Kinderbuch allerdings fasziniert nicht nur durch seinen hinreißenden Stil, sondern auch durch die Geschichte der Künstlerin, die es gestaltet hat.

Zum Freundeskreis der Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie in Verbindung stehend verbrachte die 1910 in Wien geborene Künstlerin Lisl Weil ihre Sommerfrische regelmäßig am Wolfgangsee. Wie viele ihrer Freunde und Kollegen musste sie 1938 ihre Heimat verlassen, weil sie jüdischer Abstammung war.

Bereits sehr früh widmete sich Lisl Weil der Zeichnung. Als sie 16 Jahre alt war, wurden bereits regelmäßig Karikaturen bzw. Illustrationen in einigen Wiener Tageszeitungen von ihr publiziert. Schon damals war sie als Illustratorin tätig, unter anderem für die Theaterzeitschrift „Die Stunde“ (heute die Bühne). Für ihren guten Freund Ralf Benatzky gestaltete sie so das Titelblatt für eine Notenausgabe des „Weissen Rössel am Wolfgangsee“.
Nach ersten Ausstellungserfolgen wurde ihre beginnende Karriere durch den Anschluss 1938 jäh unterbrochen. Nach Amerika wurde sie und ihre Familie durch eine Rechtsanwaltskanzlei geholt, die ihren Namen aufgrund ihrer Ausstellungstätigkeit kannten. Die erste Zeit in Amerika gestaltete sich sehr mühsam. Ein Sprössling der Firma Lanz eröffnete sehr erfolgreich ein Geschäft für Trachtenmoden in der 5th Avenue in New York und Lisl Weil konnte als Schaufensterdekorateurin arbeiten und so in den USA Fuß fassen.
Nun beginnt eine Bilderbuchkarriere. Ihr zukünftiger Ehemann, Julius Marx, den sie kurz nach ihrer Ankunft in New York kennen lernte, brachte ihr das Sujet der Kinderbuchillustrationen näher. Insgesamt gestaltete sie über 100 Kinderbücher.

Durch den damit verbundenen Ruhm war es ihr als begeisterte Musikliebhaberin möglich, gemeinsam mit den New York Philharmonikern so genannte „Young People´s Concerts“ zu geben. Diese Aufführungen verfolgten den Zweck, einer jungen Generation klassische Musik näher zu bringen. Lisl Weil gestaltete parallel zu dem Konzert überdimensionale Bilder, welche die Inhalte der Musik interpretieren sollten. Malerei, Musik und Tanz wurden so in einer „Performance“ zu einem Gesamtkunstwerk zusammengeführt.

Unter der Leitung von Moritz Schindl produzierte Weston Wood filmische Aufnahmen in denen Lisl Weil ebenfalls nicht nur als Malerin in Erscheinung trat, sondern ihre Auftritte durch Ausdruckstanz unterstrich. Beispielhaft ist der Film „Sorcerer’s Apprentice“ (1962, dir. Edward English), der noch heute als ein wesentliches Werk amerikanischer Fernsehgeschichte gilt. Darüber hinaus wurden diese Aufführungen vom Fernsehen aufgezeichnet. Diese Filmdokumente gelten als frühe Beispiele für didaktische Musikfilme für Kinder. In den Jahren 1963 und 1964 moderierte und gestaltete sie wöchentlich eine eigene Kindersendung unter dem Titel „Children´s Sketch Book“.
Wie ein Höhepunkt wirkt somit die Gestaltung des Kinderbuches zur Lebensgeschichte von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Lisl Weil starb 2006 in New York.


» Informationen zum Buch

The Seattle Times 12/13/2005

Obituary: Lisel Salzer, 99, Seattle artist who fled Nazis

By Sheila Farr - Seattle Times art critic

For some artists, acclaim only arrives after their lives have ended. But Lisel Salzer — a native of Austria who fled the Nazis and settled in Seattle — was one of the lucky ones: She was rediscovered at the age of 96 and honored with a museum exhibition in her native country. Then, two years ago, the Austrian government presented Ms. Salzer with the prestigious "Cross of Merit in Gold" for her lifetime devotion and contribution to the arts.

Ms. Salzer died Dec. 6 at her home in Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood, some nine months short of her 100th birthday. Ms. Salzer and her husband Dr. Frederick Grossman moved to Seattle from New York in 1950.

Ms. Salzer worked as a portrait artist and enamelist, showing for a time at the Otto Seligman Gallery. Among her subjects were artists James Washington Jr., George Tsutakawa and Alfredo Arreguin. During the 1970s and '80s, the Frye Art Museum mounted several solo exhibitions of her paintings and enamels.

Grossman died in 1957, and Ms. Salzer, whose parents died at the Theresiendstadt concentration camp, never remarried. Ms. Salzer had no children: Her friends and former art students became her surrogate family.

As a young woman, Ms. Salzer led a privileged life. After she finished art school, her parents sent her on a three-month painting holiday in Paris, and at 23 she set up her own studio in Vienna, not far from her parents' home.

Her paintings were accepted in the region's top juried exhibition and she was invited to show at the Würthle Gallery, which also represented Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

Ms. Salzer spent summers with her parents near Salzburg, along the shore of the Wolfgangsee. There she joined an artist colony at the village of Zinkenbach that included her former instructor Ferdinand Kitt and another painter she admired, Josef Dobrowsky.

"This group were the most famous painters in Austria from 1925 until 1938," Austrian art historian Christina Steinmetzer told The Times in 2002. Steinmetzer's research on the group had led her to Seattle and Ms. Salzer, then the only surviving member of the colony.

Steinmetzer and several other historians founded a museum to pay homage to that special group, dispersed by the Nazis. Some, like Ms. Salzer, were Jewish. Others were considered dangerous simply because they were artists and worked together. "I call them 'the lost generation' because most of them had to emigrate," Steinmetzer said.

In Seattle, Ms. Salzer was very involved with the Democratic Party. "Politics is what kept her alive the last few years," said writer Barbara Sleeper, who assisted Ms. Salzer with her autobiography. "She was hoping to stay alive to see Bush go out of office."

With her vision greatly diminished, Ms. Salzer had struggled as an artist during her final years. "She was depressed, because it's a horrible thing for a visual artist to not be able to see," said friend Lenore Kobayashi.

But even with her eyesight fading, Ms. Salzer continued to draw and delighted in sending little cartoons to friends and acquaintances. A number of her cartoons are still being published in the Canadian magazine Walrus.

A private memorial will be held. In lieu of flowers, please volunteer or send contributions to the Community Services for the Blind or Partially Sighted, 9709 Third Ave. N.E., No. 100, Seattle, WA 98115-2027.
 

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com. Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=salzerobit13&date=20051213&query=salzer

The Seattle Times 09/08/2002

A find from the 'lost generation': Austrian painter Lisel Salzer

By Sheila Farr - Seattle Times art critic

Two weeks ago, Austrian art historian Christina Steinmetzer flew to Seattle to meet a woman she'd been tracking for years. During all her sleuthing in basement archives and on the Internet, Steinmetzer never really expected to find artist Lisel Salzer alive. Salzer, 96, who's lived in Seattle since 1950, is the last survivor of a group of painters who lived and worked at the resort town of Zinkenbach, Austria, during the 1920s and '30s. Dispersed in 1939 under political pressure from the Nazis, the members of the colony emigrated to other countries, many of them never to return.
To honor the group - which included some of the country's most celebrated painters - Steinmetzer opened a museum in Zinkenbach. The unexpected way they located Salzer - and the way Salzer discovered them - seems to have been driven by fate.

Sharp, witty, and undaunted by her 96 years, Lisel Salzer has no time for junk mail. So it wasn't unusual when, a few months ago, she pitched a letter with an unfamiliar return address into a pile of scrap paper. That's the paper Salzer's 7-year-old friend and namesake, Lisel Perrine, chose one day when she came to visit and wanted to draw. Later, she took the picture home for her parents, and, though the Perrines were pleased with the gift, they thought the envelope looked important enough to return it to Salzer. The letter they found inside astonished them all. The message was from an Austrian attorney, and his words reopened a story that, for Salzer, had long ago been shattered by the Nazis.

The Austrian years
After finishing art school in 1929, fresh from a three-month painting holiday in Paris, Lisel Salzer set up her first studio in Vienna not far from her parent's home. She was 23 and excited to start her life as a professional artist. Two of her paintings were soon accepted in the "Vienna Secession," the top regional juried show, and before long Salzer was invited to exhibit at the Wüthle Gallery, where the famous painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele showed their work.
With her parents, Salzer spent summers along the shores of the scenic Wolfgangsee near Salzburg, at St. Wolfgang or St. Gilgen. And it was there in that beautiful resort region that Salzer discovered an artist colony at the tiny village of Zinkenbach. It turned out that her former instructor Ferdinand Kitt was living there year-round, along with many of his friends. Salzer remembers them as "the best artists of my generation," and among them was a painter Salzer particularly admired, Josef Dobrowsky. Salzer spent time at Zinkenbach with her friends, living at their homes and painting landscapes and portraits. For her, it was a thrill when Dobrowsky asked to paint her portrait. More than 60 years later, sitting in her Mount Baker home overlooking Lake Washington, the memory is still fresh. "I posed for him," Salzer said "and he put a mirror in back so I could watch him - the technique." Salzer still owns the portrait, which captures her wearing her girlish apparel, an inquisitive look on her face. That expression is made especially dear by knowing that what kept Salzer so engrossed was her interest in Dobrowsky's painting method.

'The lost generation'
"This group were the most famous painters in Austria from 1925 until 1938," Steinmetzer said. "I call them 'the lost generation' because most of them had to emigrate. Now it's my responsibility to give them an ideal home. ... We hope that this museum becomes one day the most important and influential of Austria."
Steinmetzer says that none of the artists from the Zinkenbach colony died in the Holocaust - and crosses herself as she says it. Nevertheless many, including Salzer, lost family and friends.
It was a heterogeneous group, Steinmetzer explains. Some, like Salzer, were Jewish; others professed strong political beliefs. Others were considered dangerous by the Nazis simply because of their artwork and the fact that they worked together. Richard West, director of Seattle's Frye Art Museum, where Salzer's work is included in the permanent collection, is an authority on German and Austrian painting. He says the time Salzer lived through was devastating.
"In 1938, there was an 'election' in Austria for Austria to join Germany," West said. "That's when Jewish art was destroyed, and a lot of artists had to flee because they were Jewish or considered decadent, and a lot of these groups were broken."
So it was with the Zinkenbach group; Salzer lost touch with artists that she had known in Europe.

Starting anew
Salzer got out of the country in 1939 by using her ingenuity to find a sponsor in the United States. "You needed a so-called affidavit. It meant that if you came here without any money there was an American citizen who would care for you," Salzer said. "I got my affidavit in a very funny way." Referring to a source book of art collectors in the United States, Salzer picked at random a dozen names. "I wrote letters saying 'I'm a painter' and so forth," Salzer recalls. "A man from Philadelphia, a bachelor, gave me an affidavit - Mr. Winthrop." But it turned out Mr. Winthrop's motivations were not entirely philanthropic.
"He was a middle-age, very romantic bachelor, and he thought it would be very romantic to have a young artist from Europe living there," Salzer recalls with a grin. "He was very disappointed that I had a boyfriend in New York."
That boyfriend was Dr. Frederick Grossman, a young Austrian physician and cellist who escaped the country ahead of Salzer and was waiting for her. They soon found an apartment together in Manhattan, "where all the action was," and married in 1942. Salzer worked as a successful portrait artist and, during the war, volunteered to do quick watercolor portraits for anyone who purchased a war bond for more than $500 at Bonwit Teller's elegant 5th Avenue department store. Salzer says that a New York Times story reported that Bonwit customers bought $698,000 in war bonds as a result of her portraits. She also took time to research the forgotten "Limoges" technique for making enamel paintings, which became an important part of her work.
Salzer and Grossman moved to Seattle in 1950. He died in 1957. Salzer continued her work as a portrait artist and enamelist, and showed at the Otto Seligman Gallery, which also represented Mark Tobey and other top regional artists. The Frye Art Museum mounted several solo exhibitions of her paintings and enamels during the 1970s and '80s.
She painted portraits of Seattle artists James Washington Jr., George Tsutakawa and Alfredo Arreguin. Salzer also proudly displays a portrait she made of the famous self-taught American painter Grandma Moses.

Discovery and joy
So, how in the world did Steinmetzer manage to find Salzer? Purely by chance, it turns out.
Steinmetzer says she was doing Internet research on another artist and discovered that Salzer had been her teacher. But, if that clue appeared out of thin air, it only came about after long years of searching and wondering. "When I started to learn the history of art, I discovered this group, and I began to see what I could find," Steinmetzer said. She discovered that there was little information available on members of the colony, all of whom had managed to emigrate. Only one, Kitt, had returned to St. Gligen after the war, but he died in 1961.
Some eight years ago, Steinmetzer and five others with a strong interest in the group joined forces. "This was the work at the university, with other historians of art," Steinmetzer said. They founded the Museum der Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie, which opened last year in a renovated schoolhouse to pay homage to that special group of regional artists.
"We are only the beginning. It's a little collection," Steinmetzer said. "We borrow paintings. It's my duty to find out all the collectors in Austria and to find the interested people."
After finding the clue about Salzer on the Internet, Steinmetzer learned that Salzer had been living in Seattle and asked the museum's attorney to see if he could contact her. That was the letter that Salzer unwittingly dumped in the scrap bin. Once Salzer read the letter and learned about the museum, she was overwhelmed and responded with an eight-page handwritten - and illustrated - letter. (Even now, at 96 and with one blind eye, Salzer still spends time every day drawing wonderfully funny little cartoons.) Steinmetzer called and the two got to know each other by phone before their emotional meeting in person. "It was exciting for us both," Steinmetzer said. Discovering the Dobrowsky portrait and an archive of previously unknown work by Salzer, as well as other members of the Zinkenbach colony, is more than she had hoped for.
But for Salzer, to finally receive such recognition in her native country is the culmination of a lifetime of work. "You see that lily?" she said, pointing at a prized plant. "It bloomed for today. It's such a special day I can hardly take it."
 

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com. Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=lisel09&date=20020809

Salzburger Nachrichten 26.06.2002 - Bernhard Strobl

Sonderausstellung: Heimat, Fremde und Exil

ST. GILGEN (SN). Die "Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie" aus den Jahren 1927 bis 1938 tritt wieder vermehrt in das Blickfeld des Kunstinteresses. Mit enormem Engagement, mit wissenschaftlicher Arbeit, mit Recherchen und nicht zuletzt mit unzähligen Vorsprachen um Sponsoring und Unterstützung durch die öffentliche Hand hat ihr Christina Steinmetzer mit weiteren Mitgliedern eines Museumsvereines in der alten Volksschule von St. Gilgen eine bleibende Gedenkstätte geschaffen. Im zweiten Jahr widmet sich das "Museum Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie" dem Sonderthema: "Heimat, Fremde, Exil". Die eindrucksvolle Präsentation zeigt unter anderem Bilder, die die Künstler im Ausland, oft im Exil, geschaffen haben. Etliche von ihnen mussten als Juden oder politisch Andersdenkende das Land verlassen - und kehrten nie wieder.
Bunt zusammengewürfelt war die aus dem Wiener Raum stammende Schar von 27 Künstlern in Zinkenbach. Sie gehörten allen politischen Lagern an. Nächtelang debattierten Juden, Nazis, Kommunisten miteinander - und blieben doch Freunde.
Die letzte Lebende aus der Gruppe, Lisl Salzer, schrieb jüngst aus Seattle und schickte eine kleine Zeichnung mit. "Es ist dies ein Liebesbeweis einer mehr als 90-jährigen, fast erblindeten Frau an die Gegend und ihre Menschen", sagt Christina Steinmetzer.
Die Ausstellung ist bis 15. September, Dienstag bis Sonntag von 15-19 Uhr geöffnet.

© SN

Salzburger Nachrichten 09.10.2002 - Bernhard Strobl

Unvorhergesehene Rückkehr: Lisel Salzer gehörte zur "Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie".

Die letzte davon noch lebende Künstlerin schenkte St. Gilgen ihre Werke.

ST. GILGEN (SN). Im Museum "Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie" in der alten Volksschule von St. Gilgen steht - gut verwahrt und gesichert - eine Kiste aus Amerika. Inhalt: Bilder. Freitagabend wird sie im Kreise der Mitglieder des Museumsvereins geöffnet. 23 Ölbilder und 200 Grafikblätter, die in den Jahren von 1932 bis 1938 in St. Gilgen entstanden sind, werden da wieder ans Licht kommen. Sie alle stammen von der letzten noch lebenden Künstlerin der damals so bekannten "Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie", von Lisel Salzer.
Per Internet und auf allerlei Umwegen ist die Obfrau des "Museumsvereines Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie", Christina Steinmetzer, mit der betagten Dame in Seattle in Kontakt gekommen. Salzer, Jahrgang 1906, stieß seinerzeit durch ihre Freunde Georg und Bettina Ehrlich, Hilde Spiel und ihren Lehrer Ferdinand Kitt zum engeren Kreis der Wiener Maler, die den Sommer gemeinsam in Zinkenbach verbrachten. Zu dieser Zeit hatte sie bereits Ausstellungen in der Wiener Sezession und in der Galerie Würthler. Nach dem Anschluss Österreichs an Hitler-Deutschland emigrierte die Künstlerin nach Amerika. Nur einmal, in den 60er Jahren, kehrte sie nach Österreich zurück und besuchte da auf der Festung Hohensalzburg die Sommerakademie mit Oskar Kokoschka.
Im August dieses Jahres besuchten Christina Steinmetzer und Sohn Georg die Künstlerin in den USA. Die schier erblindete Frau war gerührt von diesem ersten Besuch aus der alten Heimat. Bewegt berichtete sie von ihren Erinnerungen an das künstlerische und gesellschaftliche Leben in St. Gilgen. "Kein Auge blieb trocken", erzählt Georg Steinmetzer, als die Dame dann ihre in St. Gilgen geschaffenen Bilder dem Museumsverein zum Geschenk vermachte. "Die wollen endlich wieder heim", sagte Lisel Salzer. Ihre Bilder werden im nächsten Jahr in einer Sonderausstellung gezeigt. Ein Salzer-Raum kann erst eingerichtet werden, wenn sich die Gemeinde St. Gilgen bereit erklärt, weiteren Raum für das Museum adaptiert zur Verfügung zu stellen.
Der Zinkenbacher Malerkreis umfasste in den dreißiger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts über 20 Mitglieder aus dem Wiener Künstlerkreis. Die Maler aus allen politischen und gesellschaftlichen Lagern wohnten vorwiegend in Zinkenbach, malten miteinander und erlebten gemeinsame Sommerwochen. Zu ihrem künstlerischen Gedenken wurde in der alten Volksschule St. Gilgen im Vorjahr ein Museum eingerichtet. Die Sammlung Salzer ist die erste, die in den Besitz des Museumsvereines übergeht.

© SN