Alois Heinrich Luigi Kasimir (1881-1967) Austro-Hungarian, Signed Color Etching. Depicts the Belvedere Palace and front gate in Vienna, Austria. Hand signed in lower right. Date in image directly above signature: "6 Nov. 1923." 

Overall Size: 21 x 19 in. 

Sight Size: 14 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. 

#2626 . 

Alois Heinrich Luigi Kasimir was born in 1881 in Pettau (modern day Ptuj), Slovenia, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His grandfather was a painter and poet, and his father an officer in the Habsburg army who also became a professional painter. Kasimir attended the Vienna Academy of Art where he studied under William Unger, who introduced him to the technique of colored etching and also to his future wife, the artist Tanna Hoernes. Kasimir was among the first to popularize the technique of colored etching, as before then prints were usually hand-colored in a casual, sometimes haphazard manner. His technique of creating sketches in pastel and then transferring the design onto up to six plates with each one applied by hand, earned the style a better reputation and a much larger following. Throughout the first third of the 20th Century he became well-known for his numerous cityscape etchings and the occasional oil painting, usually landscapes or street scenes that captured the scale of architecture and monuments against an open sky. He traveled extensively throughout Europe to find locations, and visited the United States several times. He made two etchings for Sigmund Freud, who was a close friend of his until the early 1930s, one a bookplate and the other a Roman Forum image that Freud kept in his consulting rooms until his death. In 1933 Kasimir joined the Nazi Party, espousing fervent support for the National Socialist movement. In 1938, he joined with art printer Ernst Edhoffer to buy out the Halm & Goldmann art dealership which had previously represented him. The war, along with his role in the purchase of paintings by Egon Schiele from the Rieger collection, destroyed his international reputation. In 1945 after the fall of the Reich he was charged with high treason, illegal membership of the NSDAP, and failure to register as a former Nazi, though he was acquitted the following year, along with Edhoffer, after paying restitution for his crimes. He was jailed again in 1947 after it was discovered that he and his secretary had hidden numerous paintings by Jewish artists in his apartment to avoid having to pay higher restitution, though he claimed it was to prevent their destruction. A doctor’s letter requesting early release due to his worsening liver disease procured his freedom, but from then on he avoided the public eye and died, virtually unknown, in Grinzing, a suburb of Vienna, in 1962.

Spotting.