For the market town of Nötsch, Anton Kolig’s aspirations as an art educator—which he realized by founding his own painting school here in the 1920s—played a key role in establishing the supra-regional significance of this small Carinthian town. Among Kolig’s first students was Theodor Herzmansky, born in 1900 in Hradec Králové, Bohemia, who received decisive inspiration for his future artistic career in the Gailtal valley and maintained a friendly relationship with the leading figures of this group of painters throughout his life. Herzmansky’s recollections of his stays in Nötsch, as well as his reflections on the art of Anton Kolig and Franz Wiegele—which he published in several essays—provided valuable insights into the cultural history of the Nötsch Circle. After Herzmansky met Anton Kolig through his friend Wolfgang Schaukal, he spent several months at a time in the Gailtal valley beginning in 1921. Like his teacher, he focused intensively on the male nude during this period and further developed his distinctive sense of color. In addition, Herzmansky received significant inspiration from Franz Wiegele, which manifested itself primarily in a deliberate use of light and a dynamic interplay of cool and warm colors to create spatial depth. Furthermore, during his stay in Paris in 1926, he was able to locate Wiegele’s long-lost painting “Nude in the Forest.” Finally, in 1929, the artist moved to Prague, changed his name to Bohdan Heřmanský, and there developed a constructivist style that aligned with Czechoslovak painting of the interwar years.

Curator of the exhibition: Sigrid Diewald