Leo Scheu

Still Life with Fruits (1951)

Photo: N. Lackner / UMJ

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It is easy to pass by an almost ridiculously modest still life of cheap vegetables (named Still Life with Fruits to make it sound more prestigious, possibly)—a sign of poor postwar life as well as, perhaps, excessive local patriotism. But only if you do not know who the painter was. If you do, a striking and amusing contrast emerges. Leo Scheu (1886, Olomouc, Austria-Hungary–1958, Graz) was a prominent Styrian art administrator during the Nazi era and a major portraitist of politicians and clergymen. After the war, he became an even higher-ranking artist-politician. The initiator and first head of Graz’s Künstlerhaus, Scheu pushed for it to be finally built in 1951. According to local legend, he wanted all the city’s deceased artists to lay in wake in the apse of this majestic building. Yet, he was the only one who did.

Oil on fiberboard, 67.8 × 90.5 cm

Neue Galerie Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum

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