Nina Karasek Viennese Oil Painting Interior Still Life with Porcelain Vase and Tapestry Rug, 1925

Description

Framed 21.2 X 25.5
Unframed 17 X 21
Signed and dated 1920.

Nina Karasek (Joële)
born 1883 Kuttenberg, Czech Lands, … more Framed 21.2 X 25.5
Unframed 17 X 21
Signed and dated 1920.

Nina Karasek (Joële)
born 1883 Kuttenberg, Czech Lands, Austro-Hungarian Empire, died in 1952 (I have also seen the date recorded as 1933) Vienna, Austria. Nina Karasek was an Austrian Impressionist & Modern artist who was born in 1883. Her work was featured in exhibitions at the Es Baluard, Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art and the Bildraum Bodensee.
Little is known of Nina Karasek's life. She was born in 1883 in Kuttenberg (Kutná Hora) in Bohemia, studied art at the Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen (Art School for Women and Girls) in Vienna, Austria, under Adalbert Seligmann and Tina Blau. She studied at the Frauenakademie in Vienna and Munich. In the 1920's she worked first as a landscape painter and an illustrator, later turning toward symbolism, painting mystical subjects after her interest in spiritualism. Her conventional works were shown at various exhibitions. At the age of 44, while she was copying a work by Rembrandt in an Italian museum, she fell into an altered state of consciousness. Rembrandt appeared to her, took possession of her arm, and immediately her hand started to draw something quite different from what she had intended. From then on, for the rest of her life Nina Karasek was in “supernatural” contact with a series of great masters like Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, Goya, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Klimt and others. Under their guidance and inspiration, she drew and painted works "in the style" of the masters. But very soon her works became stylistically more and more unrestricted and Symbolist, showing an enormous range of creative expression, ranging from symbolic and allegorical motifs to bewildering images with a fantastic arsenal of figures and private characters, signs, and symbols, and to frantic, gestural sketches and abstract compositions. From then on, she often signed her works with her esoteric “primordial name” Joële. (Nina Karasik-Joel)
Almost everything we know about her life was from what she noted on the reverse of her drawings: sometimes diary-like notes of her horrible living conditions during World War II, but often strangely impenetrable explanations of the depicted motifs – often as fascinating and mysterious as the drawings themselves. In her works and notes, an exciting private cosmology and mythology unfolds, a drama of hidden powers and principles that flow through macrocosm as well as microcosm. Shortly after their discovery, Nina Karasek's Spiritualist, mediumistic works have found their way into galleries and major international collections.

SELECT EXHIBITIONS

2019 The Medium’s Medium: Spiritualist Art Practices From the Turn of the Century and Beyond. The Gallery of Everything, London, (she showed with Madge Gill, Augustin Lesage, Fleury-Joseph Crépin, Victor Simon, Fernand Desmoulin, Nina Karasek, Ernst Josephson, Madame Favre, Emma Kunz, and Hilma af Klint.)
2019 Plants of the Soul: Floral Fantasies between Symbolism and Outsider Art. Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany,
2019 Flying High: Women Artists of Art Brut. Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna, Austria,
2019 Au delà : aux confins du visible et de l'invisible. Galerie Christian Berst art brut, Paris, France,
(where she was exhibited with Aloïse, Scottie Wilson, René Magritte, Juan Miro, Victor Hugo, André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Paul Eluard, Marx Ernst and Odilon Redon.)
2019 ALMA. Mediums and visionaries ,Es Baluard, Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art ,Palma De Mallorca, Spain
2018 Leben in Art Brut: Sammlung Hannah Rieger ,Bildraum Bodensee ,Bregenz, Austria 2016 Art Brut : A Story of Individual Mythologies. Works from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, Oliva Creative Factory, São João da Madeira, Portugal,
Entrée des médiums: Spiritisme et art d’Hugo à Breton à la Maison de Victor Hugo. Paris
2007 Galleria De Faveri Arte, Feltre, Italy
2007 Donne simboliste: Le misteriosofie di Gertrude Honzatko-Mediz e Nina Karasek. Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza, Ferrara, Italy less