Detail

This portrait of Dr. Heinrich Drimmel was painted in 1957. In 1954, Drimmel was appointed Austrian minister of education by Federal Chancellor Julius Raab. During his time in office, in September 1962, the Museum of the 20th Century opened, the forerunner of today’s mumok. Drimmel’s legacy in culture and politics in Austria can thus be felt to this day. He was a very conservative politician, but surprisingly he did not insist on his portrait being done in a classical naturalist manner. Instead, Herbert Boeckl painted Drimmel in the style of contemporary Austrian postwar modernism. Nonetheless, this half-length portrait shows the politician post as statesman. Wearing a suit and tie, Drimmel is seated in semi-profile before a dynamic background. His serious gaze is directed past the viewer and into the distance. He has a deep line on his brow and academic spectacles that underscore his thoughtful and decisive pose. His brightly painted hands seem by contrast to be in movement and agile. At the time he painted this portrait, Herbert Boeckl was professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine arts and director of the “Evening Act,” an obligatory event for all master-class students. Although self-taught, he remained closely attached to the Academy, with numerous posts and responsibilities and not without controversy. Thanks to support from the Vienna art dealer Gustav Nebehay, Boeckl was able early in his career to travel to study art in Berlin and Paris. During these journeys, the young Austrian painter became acquainted with various trends in European painting. One significant impulse was the work of the early French modernist painter Paul Cézanne. In Cézanne’s painting, the dissolving forms of impressionism no longer glimmer on the surface of the canvas, but appear to be more solid. Boeckl uses subdued colors and pastose brushwork in ways that clearly show Cézanne’s influence.