Early paintings by Henry Koerner combine realism, personal subtext

One look at the central figure in Henry Koerner's painting "The Prophet," painted between 1945 and '46, and it would be easy to dismiss the convulsing character as a demagogue eagerly converting a wide-eyed crowd.

But step back from viewing this painting and place it in context with the 30 other paintings by Koerner on view in the exhibition "The Early Work of Henry Koerner," which opened Saturday at The Frick Art Museum in Point Breeze, and it might seem as though the zealot is Koerner himself, desirously drawing attention to the abominable brutality millions suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime in Germany.

Not a far-fetched notion considering that the Austrian-born artist lost both of his parents and his brother in the holocaust.

"You get a sense that the world could just all fall apart in a second," says Thomas Smart, director of museum programs at The Frick Art Museum, about the painting. "He's telling us that the world that we live in, the order and structure that we take for granted, is a vapor. It's paper-thin and can vanish in a moment."

Although Koerner died an untimely death July 4, 1991 -- the result of a hit-and-run accident 22 days earlier while riding his bicycle in his native Vienna -- to this day he is greatly revered and much talked about among those in local art circles. So it is with much anticipation that this tribute exhibition of his early works has opened.

The reason for this exhibition, says Smart, is simple: "Because it's just great painting." And visitors to this exhibition surely will agree.

Born in Vienna in 1915, Koerner, who lived most of his life between Pittsburgh and Vienna after moving to Pittsburgh in 1953 to teach at the Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham College, first came to the United States in 1939. Not long afterward, he began working for the Office of War Information (Domestic), and by 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in World War II. After the war ended, he was assigned to Berlin in 1945 as a court artist at the Nuremberg trials.

In 1947, Koerner had his first one-man show in Berlin, but not before traveling back to Vienna a year before to discover that his parents and brother had been killed.

The first painting on view in the exhibition is "My Parents No. 1" (1945), which memorializes the artist's parents, Leo and Fanny Koerner, in the surroundings of their home. The last, "My Brother?" (1957), is a posthumous portrait of Koerner's older brother, Kurt. But, surprisingly, the works in between are not about family or the holocaust -- at least not overtly. They are instead more of a manifestation of one man's struggle with the guilt that comes with being a survivor.

This was not uncommon among artists who struggled for understanding in the wake of the last century's most horrific war. Many artists, such as Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and Philip Evergood, painted works rich with personal symbolisms as a form of psychological release. This type of painting came to be known as "magic realism," largely because it combined an element of believable realism with largely inexplicable subtexts.

An excellent example is Koerner's painting "The Pigeons" (1948-49), which depicts a confluence of everyday incidents altered by an overwhelming sense of terror: An elderly couple feed pigeons while another couple embraces, a man reads a newspaper while two more struggle with a knife, and a young girl tries desperately to shield herself from a cluster of descending pigeons.

"You read it as episodes, but when you try to add all of the episodes up, the narrative is unknown, it's mysterious, it's enigmatic," Smart says.

Other paintings offer even more mysteries. In "Vanity Fair (Mirror of Life)" (1946), a microcosmic world of seemingly unrelated events -- a carnival, a medicine dispensary, a dance hall, etc. -- swirl around a group of ladies shopping for clothes. In "The Lot" (1948-49), a diverse cast of characters is depicted doing a variety of things in and around a junked car: One man sleeps in the front seat, a young girl picks flowers, and off in the distance a man urinates against a brick wall.

"To ask what all of this means is the wrong question," Smart says. "The right question is, 'What is my experience of these strange arrangements?' You as a viewer have to encounter that and really engage with that strangeness."

Since he began to paint in 1943, Koerner created some 7,000 works of art. Although they range from drawings and simple studies to full-scale oil paintings, underpinning them all is skilled draftsmanship. In addition to the 31 paintings displayed in two galleries, a third gallery holds 27 drawings selected by his widow, Joan, that support this.

Many are studies for paintings, such as several head studies for "The Prophet." But among them, viewers will find two sketches of Nazi war criminals Koerner drew during the Nuremberg trials.

They are haunting to say the least and a fitting footnote to the artist's legacy. Looking back on this show, it is easy to see why Koerner was an artist who was, is and will remain very well respected.

As an introductory to this exhibition, a smaller exhibition of seven paintings by contemporary magic realist painter Valentin Lustig is on display in the Frick Art Museum's rotunda.

The son of holocaust survivors, Lustig, like Koerner before him, employs personal symbolic imagery and a semi-realistic style to create paintings that reference many things throughout history, particularly the Nazi Holocaust.

In these seven paintings, Lustig depicts his "Auntie Hoka" -- a Hungarian who, along with her four children, had been killed by the Nazis -- engaged in an imagined journey. Symbolic rather than explicit, together the paintings offer an appropriate introduction to the world of magic realism as realized in the Koerner exhibition.

Additional Information:

Details

'The Early Work of Henry Koerner'

When: Through Nov. 9. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; from noon to 6 p.m. Sundays

Admission: Free

Where: The Frick Art Museum at the Frick Art & Historical Center, 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze

Details: (412) 371-0600 or www.frickart.org

'Gallery Talk: A Family Portrait'

Renowned art historian Dr. Joseph Leo Koerner, the artist's son, will give the lecture 'A Family Portrait' at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday

Catalogue

Title: 'The Early Work of Henry Koerner'

Writer: Dr. Edith Balas, professor of art history at Carnegie Mellon University and research associate at the University of Pittsburgh

Publisher: The Frick Art & Historical Center, 2003.

Features: Color photographs of all 31 paintings in the exhibit 'The Early Work of Henry Koerner'

Price: $35 hardcover, $25 softcover; available at the museum shop