Gustav Hessing

(1909-1981)

Gustav Hessing was born in Chernivtsi, Austria-Hungary in 1909 and worked as an Austrian painter. He completed his studies at the Academy in Vienna with Ferdi-nand Andri and Karl Fahringer. Under the Nazi regime, Hessing was banned from working. In 1946 he was co-founder and first president of the artist group “Der Kreis”. From 1957 Hessing worked as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He was a member of the Vienna Secession from 1958 to 1960 and from 1969. In 1967 Hessing received the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts. The Austrian Belvedere showed a major retrospective two years before his death in 1979. Gustav Hessing died in Vienna in 1981.

Gustav Hessing mainly created portraits, landscapes and still life paintings. He was guided by the art of Richard Gerstl, Edvard Munch and Paul Cézanne. His works from the interwar period can be assigned to Austrian expressionism with their intense colors. During the Second World War, extremely gloomy works were created due to many losses. From the 1940s onwards, Hessing began to make representational abstractions. These increasingly developed into geometric sign systems. A decade later, works were created that were shaped by surrealism and cubism. Most of his work was lost to bombing in 1944. Gustav Hessing created oil paintings, watercolors and graphics.

Source: https://www.hessing.at/de/biografie

Source: https://sammlung.belvedere.at/people/801/gustav-hessing

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