ArtistAustrianb.1874–d.1951
Oskar Laske
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Oskar Laske was born on 8 January 1874 in Czernowitz, the capital of the Bukowina region within the Austro-Hungarian Empire - a city of mixed cultures that is today Chernivtsi in western Ukraine. His father was an architect, and around age thirteen the family relocated to Vienna. He began painting lessons young, studying under the Hungarian artist Anton Hlavacek, before enrolling at the Technische Hochschule in 1892 for a six-year architectural training. He continued at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Otto Wagner from 1899 to 1904, completing what amounted to a double formation in architectural precision and fine art.
For several years Laske practiced as a freelance architect while exhibiting paintings with growing success. He joined the Hagenbund in 1907, one of the Vienna art associations positioned as a moderate counterpoint to the Secession's more programmatic avant-gardism. His dual background - architectural draughtsmanship combined with a taste for the comic and the surreal - gave his canvases a quality unlike anything else being produced in Vienna at the time. By 1908 he had committed fully to painting.
Before the First World War he traveled widely through Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, filling sketchbooks that fed his later compositions. When war broke out, Laske served as an officer in Galicia and on the Isonzo front, then was appointed a k. u. k. (imperial and royal) war painter, recording military operations in the Alps and Eastern Europe. The experience of catastrophe on an industrial scale amplified the darkly comic dimension of his subsequent studio work. He joined the Vienna Secession in 1924 and later also the Künstlerhaus.
Laske's most discussed works are his multiple versions of "Das Narrenschiff" (Ship of Fools), a composition he first developed in 1923. The painting - densely populated with figures caught in the follies of ambition, pleasure, and delusion - works as both allegorical tableau and social commentary. An oil version from 1949 is held at the Harvard Art Museums. His "Schlaraffenland" (Land of Cockaigne) belongs to the same vein of quasi-utopian imagery with satirical undertones. Alongside painting, he produced etchings and illustrations; his first etching appeared in 1904 and printmaking remained a significant part of his practice. A large commemorative exhibition was held at the Albertina in Vienna after his death in 1951.
At auction, Laske's work is sold primarily through the major Viennese houses. In the Auctionist database, im Kinsky accounts for 11 of his 14 lots, with Dorotheum Vienna holding the remaining 3. The top recorded result is 50,000 EUR for "Die Kreuzigung" (The Crucifixion). Other sold works include an oil of the Sultan Valide mosque in Istanbul (7,000 EUR), a view of the Naschmarkt (6,000 EUR), and a depiction of the Minoritenkirche in Vienna (2,500 EUR) - a range that reflects both his religious and urban subject matter.