Otto Friedrich Raab 1862-1937 Vienna 26 Scherzo, from the Rhythms Cycle for the Vestibule of a Music Room Tempera on canvas. Signed, inscribed with title and dated Wien 1913 on the reverse of the canvas. 100 x 100 cms. (39 3 /8 x 39 3 /8 in.) Provenance: Private Collection, Sweden. Exhibited: Vienna, Secession, 1913: XLIV Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs. Literature: Vienna, Secession, 1913: XLIV Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs, catalogue. Die Kunst, Monatshefte für freie und angewandte Kunst, volume XXVII, Munich, 1913, p. 415; Leon Trotsky, Vienna Secession 1913, published in the Kievskaya Mysl, nos 171 and 172, Kiev, 23 rd and 24 th June 1913; Thieme Becker, Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler, vol II, pp. 473-474. Surprisingly little is known of Friedrich’s life. After an early and successful career as a history painter, Friedrich settled permanently in Vienna in 1894, and in 1897, along with Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and others became a founding member of the Vienna Secession. He contributed regularly to Ver Sacrum, its official journal, and occasionally designed posters for the group (fig.1). In Rudolf Bacher’s famous drawing, Friedrich is one of only a handful present to greet the Emperor Franz Joseph on the latter’s visit to the curious onion domed building off the Ring. In his everyday life he worked as a teacher at the Wiener Frauenakademie, an art school for women founded in 1893. So little now remains of Friedrich’s work that it would seem much of it was destroyed, by accident or design. This painting and its companion are fortunately survivors belonging to a series of five of which two still remain undiscovered. They belong to his most well documented work, a cycle of pictures on musical themes to be hung in the antechamber of a music-room. According to Thieme-Becker, “His work developed increasingly in a decorative direction, finding expression in the composition, the combination of colours and line, as well as striving for the association with the applied arts. This can be seen in all of his work, as for example in his decorative cycle “Rhythms” for a music room (exhibited at the Secession in 1913)…” 1 The cycle certainly seems to have made an impression on the public. By chance, the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was living in Vienna in exile at the time, visited the exhibition at the Secession in 1913, and was so moved by these paintings that he wrote about them. 1. Otto Friedrich, Poster for the XXXIII Secession Exhibition in Vienna in 1909. “I visited the spring Vienna Secession only at the end of June, almost on the eve of its closure. Apart from myself, some family excursion from Galicia wandered around the halls: a Polish gentleman, ladies and their children…They were very noisy, all ate sweets and in general behaved as if they were in the Gerngross department store. (…) As always, there were interesting works at the Secession this time. 82
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