Background
Franz Sedlacek was born on January 21, 1891, in Breslau/Wroclaw, but grew up in Linz where the family moved to in 1897.
Franz Sedlacek with his wife and two daughters
Franz Sedlacek was born on January 21, 1891, in Breslau/Wroclaw, but grew up in Linz where the family moved to in 1897.
Even as a young school boy Sedlacek was creating humorous drawings and cartoons - his path was set from the very beginning. In 1911 Sedlacek went to Vienna to study chemistry at the Technical University.
A self-taught painter, Franz Sedlacek continued his art and by 1913 founded MAERZ, a Linz artist’ association together with Clement and Franz Brosch, Anton Lutz, Hans Pollack and Heinz Bitzan. Sedlacek’s university studies were interrupted by World War I. He was sent to Galicia and the Isonzo Front.
After his early years as a graphic artist and caricaturist, in the 1920’s Sedlacek concentrated on painting in oil. In 1920 he participated in a group exhibition at the 57th Exhibition of the Vienna Secession. In the same decade he began his long career as a curator at the Technical Museum Vienna.
He participated in the Austrian Art Exhibition 1900-1924 at the Vienna Künstlerhaus (1924). Together with Herbert Ploberger and Paul Ikrath, he participated in the exhibition Romanticism and New Objectivity in Upper Austria in the Upper Austrian Museum in Linz. He began an important friendship with Herbert Reyl-Hanisch who in 1930, painted a well-known portrait of Sedlacek’s wife.
In the 1930s Sedlacek was included in an exhibit of contemporary Austrian art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sedlacek’s surreal imagery, full of wonderfully bizarre and grotesque landscapes, is closely related to the movements of the Neue Sachlichkeit and Neuromanik. He had, by then, become one of the most internationally renowned Austrian painters of the interwar period.
In 1937 Sedlacek was promoted to Deputy Director of the Technical Museum. The demands of the position left little time to make art and Sedlacek’s productivity as an artist was left to his leisure time. However, he enjoyed a second American exhibit in at the Carnegie International Exhibition of Paintings, Pittsburgh (1938).
During World War II, as a First Lieutenant and later Captain of the German Army, Sedlacek served in Stalingrad, Norway and Poland. The director of the Technical Museum attempted but failed to get Sedlacek released from military service toward the end of the war.
Industrielandschaft
Stadtbild
1929Moulage Studio
1932The Audit
1913Imaginary Heads, Study
1936Double Heads
1933Ghosts on a Tree
1933Ghosts on a Tree
1933Noctural Homcoming
1927Reiter Und Drache
1936Blumen Und Insekte
1939Auferstehung Des Fleisches
1938Bavarian Landscape
The Unicorn
1925Landscape with Painter
1926Der Chemiker
1932Flower Piece
1922Titel Der "jugend"
1930St. Antonius
1925Song in the Twilight
1931The Sad Family
1935Evening Landscape
1933Das Verspätete Nachtgespenst Und Die Trunkenbolde
1931Ghost With Butcher Knife
1934Bibliothek
1939Fanciful Ink Drawing II
1931Die Strasse
1939Abendlied
1938The Moon Calf
1936Franz Sedlacek was a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus after the dissolution of Secession.
In 1925 Franz Sedlack married Maria Albrecht and in 1928 their two daughters were born.