di Rudolf Ullik
about Rudolf Ullik
Professor Dr. Dr. Rudolf
Ullik (1900-1996) was a known Viennese painter and medical doctor.
After his course of studies under the direction of Günther Baszel at the
Academy of Applied
Arts in Vienna he attended the Summer Academy of Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg
for ten years.
He became a very close friend to
Kokoschka. Ullik is a honorary member of the Association
of Austrian Fine Artists and he received several honours amongst them the
Austrian first class
honorary cross for science and arts and the golden laurel of the Wiener
Künstlerhaus.
His works were periodically exhibited in Vienna in the Wiener Künstlerhaus
and besides
that there were several collective exhibitions all over Europe, an
exhibition of his watercolour
paintings and his acrylic works at the Vienna Secession in 1973 and another
large exhibition in
1980 against in the Wiener Küstlerhaus together with the publication of a
catalogue.
In 1960 the
Rupertinum
Museum of Modern European Art in Salzburg staged
a selling exhibition
of his works.
Rudolf Ullik was known and
present also abroad like in Florence, Buenos Aires, New York
and Toulouse. Public institutions and museums bought his works. Therefore
now his works
can be admired in the Federal Ministry for Education, in the Museum of Tulln
and in the
Federal Chancellery. Also many private collectors admire his works,
particularly his meaningful
oil paintings of Italian and Austrian landscapes and cities as well as his
watercolour paintings.
Rudolf Ullik is an
autodidact but he associated with famous artists already in his youth like
with Kokoschka and Schiele in Vienna, Liebermann, Slevogt and Orlik in
Berlin. Their
works and particularly the works of Kokoschka and Schiele had also an
influence on Ullik’s
own way of painting. “Being familiar with all areas of the modern
psychology, he dealt with
the phenomenon of the profundities and the subconscious and he experimented
with shapes
and colours on a strictly scientific basis. His originally figurative
declarations converted through
a logically consistent method to an absolutely abstract style of strong and
ascending pictorial
contents deriving from the amorphous sphere of subconscious feelings which
take shape in a
constantly changing variation, wide and powerful and in a loosened
technique.”
(Translation of a quotation by Walter Maria Neuwirth).
“As autodidact he painted
landscapes, portraits, nude paintings and expressionistic metaphors.
His way of painting was very much influenced by his friend and teacher Oskar
Kokoschka
and by Soutines, in other words by the expressionistic concreteness of the
20th century. In his
paintings knowledge and feelings are joined together to real organisms,
which show the
capacity of experiencing and thinking of a man who has never ceased to see
his existence
as an experiment that is continuously revealing new experiences.”
(Translation of a quotation
by Prof. Peter Kodera on the occasion of the huge exhibition in the Viennese
House of Artists in 1980).
For a long time it was
assumed that Rudolf Ullik’s estate got lost. Most of his works were
in private hands and they were hardly available till now. Oliver Hunter from
City-Antique Vienna
did not spare any efforts to find and replenish the valuable collection of
oil paintings,
watercolour paintings, tempera and drafts. Therefore in November 2005 the
monograph entitled
“The Viennese painter Rudolf Ullik” is published and from the 30th
of March 2006 to
the 5th of April 2006 “A Retrospective of Rudolf Ullik” takes
place in the Wiener Künstlerhaus.
This commemoration in occasion of the 10th day of death of Rudolf
Ullik will return to the great
Viennese surgeon, painter and philosopher who wrongly fell into oblivion the
status that he deserves.
15.08.05/TR_pm
