DOI Artikel:
Kudelska, Dorota: Fryderyk Pautsch i jego obrazy w wiedeńskim Herresgeschichtliches Museum
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.39127#0094
92
DOROTA KUDELSKA
FRYDERYK PAUTSCH AND HIS PAINTINGS AT THE MILITARY HISTORY MUSEUM IN VIENNA
Abstract
This article analyses the works of Fryderyk Pautsch (1877-1950) painted during the First World War. The artist served in a Kunst-
gruppe (art group) of the Austrian Kriegspresseąuartier - an organization responsible for documentation and propaganda. The artistic
output of these units was shown in numerous war exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, and other cities. There Pautsch presented many
works that were freąuently reproduced in art catalogues. Today some of these paintings are in the Military History Museum in Yienna.
Artists of the Kunstgruppe had to tackle “compulsory” subjects such as soldiers’ life behind the front lines, or views of the similarly
organized field cemeteries, but they also painted other scenes. Initially mutilation and death were not depicted but with time the cruelty
of war began to gradually emerge. Censorship meant that at first only paintings showing the ordeal of hundreds of horses, men’s compan-
ions in pain and fear, were allowed to be exhibited. Indeed in Pautsch’s work this undoubtedly represented a substitute for the physical
and psychological suffering of soldiers. At the same time, the artist produced realistic (although somewhat expressionistic) portraits of
his comrades from the Front and of the Russian prisoners of war. Pautsch’s war paintings in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, and
those reproduced in war catalogues, are along the same lines of artistic thought that he developed before the war. Despite the fact that
the realistic approach does not distinguish his output from that of dozens of contemporary portraits and views of wartime reality, the
expressionist deformations remind us of the brute force of destruction dominating human life.
DOROTA KUDELSKA
FRYDERYK PAUTSCH AND HIS PAINTINGS AT THE MILITARY HISTORY MUSEUM IN VIENNA
Abstract
This article analyses the works of Fryderyk Pautsch (1877-1950) painted during the First World War. The artist served in a Kunst-
gruppe (art group) of the Austrian Kriegspresseąuartier - an organization responsible for documentation and propaganda. The artistic
output of these units was shown in numerous war exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, and other cities. There Pautsch presented many
works that were freąuently reproduced in art catalogues. Today some of these paintings are in the Military History Museum in Yienna.
Artists of the Kunstgruppe had to tackle “compulsory” subjects such as soldiers’ life behind the front lines, or views of the similarly
organized field cemeteries, but they also painted other scenes. Initially mutilation and death were not depicted but with time the cruelty
of war began to gradually emerge. Censorship meant that at first only paintings showing the ordeal of hundreds of horses, men’s compan-
ions in pain and fear, were allowed to be exhibited. Indeed in Pautsch’s work this undoubtedly represented a substitute for the physical
and psychological suffering of soldiers. At the same time, the artist produced realistic (although somewhat expressionistic) portraits of
his comrades from the Front and of the Russian prisoners of war. Pautsch’s war paintings in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, and
those reproduced in war catalogues, are along the same lines of artistic thought that he developed before the war. Despite the fact that
the realistic approach does not distinguish his output from that of dozens of contemporary portraits and views of wartime reality, the
expressionist deformations remind us of the brute force of destruction dominating human life.