Anton Kolig (1886-1950)

Anton Kolig was born 1886 in Neutitschein (former Moravia – today Nový Jičín in the Czech Republic), he was the son of a church painter named Ferdinand Kolig and his wife Maria. In 1904 he started to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna, together with Oskar Kokoschka. But 1907 he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts and visited the classes of Heinrich Lefler, Rudolf Bacher and Alois Delug. At the Academy he met Sebastian Isepp and Franz Wiegele, who became lifetime friends of Kolig. They travelled to Nötsch in the South of Austria, which was the home village of Isepp and Wiegele. 1912 Kolig married Katharina Wiegele, the sister of Franz Wiegele.

1911 was an exhibition of the artists association Hagenbund in Vienna, where Kolig showed his works for the first time to the public. Gustav Klimt and Carl Moll recommended Kolig for a fellowship in Paris, so he studied the modern French paintings at the Louvre. During the outbreak of the First World War Kolig was in Marseille and then he fled across Italy back to Nötsch. 1916 he enlisted to the army and was sent to the Italian front. Through the intervention of the poet and principal Richard von Schaukal Kolig was instructed as a war artist. 1917 he received the order to paint a winged altar for the emperor Karl I., which stayed unfinished when the monarchy broke down. During the First World War Kolig did a lot of portraits showing generals and prisoners, which he showed in a highly respected exhibition in Klagenfurt together with Egon Schiele paintings. 1928 he won the gold medal in Dusseldorf for his portrait of General Gottfried Seibt and in 1936 he received the Austrian State Award.

After the First World War Kolig lived in Nötsch, where he tried to establish a private art school, his first students were Gerhart Frankl, Theodor Herzmansky and Wolfgang Schaukal. 1926/27 he worked on tapestries and mosaics for the entrance of the festival hall in Salzburg. Then he received a chair at the Academy in Stuttgart and his oeuvre became more and more internationally respected. 1929 Kolig got the order to paint the small state hall at the statehouse in Klagenfurt, which he finished together with his students. These frescoes were ruined during the Anschluss of Austria 1938.

While the Nazi regime many of his works were destroyed or removed from the galleries, also the mosaic in Salzburg. Kolig stayed in Stuttgart until 1943, when he was forced into retirement by the Nazis he came back to Nötsch. 1944 Kolig and his family were injured while a bombardment, where also many paintings were destroyed.

Anton Kolig died 1950 in Nötsch.