Josef Dobrowsky - Buy or sell works
22 September 1889, Carlsbad (Bohemia) - 9 January 1964, Tullnerbach (Austria)
Josef Dobrowsky was an Austrian painter who is currently considered to be one of the most important artists of the interwar period.
Born in Carlsbad in 1899, the son of a jeweller, Dobrowsky attended Franz Hohenberger's painting school before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1906 under Christian Griepenkerl and Rudolf Bacher. His classmates included Anton Faistauer, Sebastian Isepp, Ferdinand Kitt, Anton Kolig, Anton Emanuel Peschka, Egon Schiele and Franz Wiegele. He was also close friends with Ernst Huber.
Interrupted by the First World War, Dobrowsky was only able to successfully complete his studies once it had ended. In the years thereafter, he was a member of both the Viennese (1921) and Prague (1934) Secession movements. He preferred portraits, landscapes and bucolic scenes, which he painted in the style of the Dutch genre painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As professor of the master-class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1946 to 1963, he taught great painters such as Alfred Hrdlicka, Giselbert Hoke, Josef Mikl, Wolfgang Hollegha, Heinrich Maria Hunger, Cornelius Kolig and Arnulf Rainer.
In 1962 he was awarded the Great Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts. When Dobrowsky died two years later in Tullnerbach, he left behind a comprehensive body of works consisting of just under 2500 oil paintings and 10,000 paper pieces.
In 2014, the Upper Belvedere dedicated a major exhibition to the artist, where his artwork is a growing interest in the art market.
Paintings by Dobrowsky have regularly appeared in Dorotheum auctions for many years.