Oskar Zwintscher painted his great love again and again: Portrait of the young Adele now in Dresden | free press

Visual arts.

The Albertinum of the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) can look forward to a new addition: The earliest known portrait of Oskar Zwintscher’s wife Adele was acquired from a private collection and is on display from now until January 15, 2023 after a conservation effort in the current special exhibition “Escape from the World and modern. Oskar Zwintscher in art around 1900″. According to the SKD, the Albertinum currently owns 17 works by Zwintscher, including “The Artist’s Wife as a Young Girl” from 1894. His work can now be understood in an even more comprehensive form.
He must have loved his wife very much or even adored it: According to the information provided, no one preoccupied Oskar Zwintscher (1870-1916) more than his wife Adele, b. Ebelt (1872-1942). The painter met her when he was young, when he moved to Meissen at the end of 1892 after completing his studies at the Dresden Art Academy and stayed there for more than ten years. On September 26, 1898, the two had married. Up until his death, he created numerous other fascinating portraits of his wife, some of which are now among the artist’s major works.
Oskar Zwintscher is considered an important representative of decadentism (also fin de siècle), which describes a cultural movement between 1890 and 1914. Born in Borna, the “Saxon Gustav Klimt” was famous during his lifetime and valued by fellow artists such as Klimt, Max Klinger, Arnold Böcklin, Ferdinand Hodler and Heinrich Vogeler, but later fell into oblivion.