Erwin Stoltz Biography
Erwin Stolz (1896 - 1987) was a Czech painter and draftsman.
After working as an agricultural engineer and being a prisoner in Italy during the First World War, he devoted himself to painting, working as an industrial publicist and attending numerous art courses in Vienna. He had contacts with Gustav Kurt Beck, who had an influence on the spread of the avant-garde in the Viennese world, Erich Mallina, who introduced him to his vision of the mystical-religious world and the theosophical society, Alexander Rothaug, a great illustrator and symbolist painter like Stolz himself and the artists of the Hagenbund Union. In his career, Stolz followed various artistic currents. He had a classical education which was expressed admirably in portraits, in Art Nouveau paintings (particularly nouveau and deco) and in the symbolism which distinguish many of his drawings and tempera, in which he expressed an art of great graphic quality, highly influenced by Max Klinger (1857 - 1920) and Gust Klimt (1862 - 1918). In the 1920s, however, alongside these trends, he was also interested in expressionist painting and New Objectivity, as can be appreciated in some portraits and in the numerous nudes created from 1925 to the end of the 1930s, which was his most fruitful. After the Second World War, his painting was mainly oriented towards the surreal. Erwin Stolz excelled above all in ink drawing.
