Emil Holzhauer: The Portrait of an Artist and my own art critic

 

 Maurice asks himself the burning question:  But is it art?

 Listening to the Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 5 played by Alfred Brendel,  an Austrian artist who played every. single. work. written by Beethoven for the piano, both solo and ensemble by the ripe old age of twenty-eight.

 As I mentioned in a previous post, I happen to be friends with the woman who is the present curator of Holzhaur's works.  If you'd like to see his work you can go to this link.

 This book is written in the style called, "creative non fiction". I'm not quite sure what that means other than that I suppose the essential people and events in this book are true, while the actual conversations, facial expressions etc. are a product of the author's imagination, albeit, I'm sure Edwards did her utmost to maintain biographical integrity.

As she could well do since she was a neighbor of the author in his latter years.

Emil Holzhauer was a member of the "Ashcan" school of art. While it was popular at the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century to create pretty, ornate paintings, pleasing to the eye, the Ashcan School, founded by Robert Henri, went in the opposite direction. They painted gritty scenes in the New York Bowery, the segregated shanty towns where the black community lived. They did not limit themselves to the rich and decorous, but also painted the poor and pungent.

Edwards' biography traces Holzhauer's life from his harsh upbringing by an alcoholic father and loving, but passive mother in Germany, to immigrating to New York City as a young man still in his teens who spoke no English. There he worked in factories, using his skills as an engraver, while attending Henri's school at night.

During WW's I and II, he faced severe discrimination as a German. Nevertheless, he managed to slowly over his lifetime achieve his own style and taught at different art schools, even though he himself lacked a college education.

By the time he was in his fifties, he had finally achieved national fame and his paintings have hung in the Art Institute of Chicago, New York Galleries as well as in the galleries of various colleges.

The University of Northwest Florida in Niceville, Florida has been the fortunate recipient of many of his works because that is where he settled in his old age having by this time tired of the fast paced, glitzy culture of the northeast.

Anyone interested in art and artists will enjoy this book as a source of inspiration to how one man with self-discipline and determination cut his own way through life and left the rest of us a priceless legacy. 

 

I bought my copy of the book on eBay and found this inscription inside.