Lot 32: POSTER: ALFRED KELLER (1875-1945) HAGENBUND.

ALFRED KELLER (1875-1945) HAGENBUND. Circa 1905.
40x17 1/4 inches.
Condition A-: minor losses and restoration along vertical and horizontal folds. Framed.
The Hagenbund, officially known as the Kunstlerbund Hagen, was the third most important Austrian art group after the Secession and the Kunstlerhaus. Founded by Heinrich Leffler and Joseph Urban, the association also boasted such members as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. The group, named after Mr. Hagen, who ran the inn where they frequently met, was dissolved by the Nazi party in 1938. Less radical than the Seccessionists, the Hagenbund was far more open to artists, their only criteria being the quality of a work of art. We found no information on Keller, but his nearly abstract work, evocative of leaves on a tree or perhaps lanterns hanging from trees beneath a starry sky, is in the pure Viennese style.