Meta Steinitz

Künstler*in Georg Merkel (1881 Lemberg/ Lviv – 1976 Wien)

Object typeGemälde
MediumCharcoal on paper
Dimensions
73 x 60 cm
SignatureSign. rechts unten: Merkel
Inventory number9594
Locations Derzeit nicht ausgestellt
Credit Line2001 Schenkung aus der Sammlung Steinitz
Georg Merkel was born poor, but through his studies in Kraków he was able to move to Paris, where he discovered Paul Cézanne and French Neoclassicism. The portrait is of Meta Steinitz, a friend, social democratic activist, and wife of the attorney Heinrich Steinitz. In the 1930s, the couple managed a bookstore in the center of Vienna, which served as a conspiratorial meeting place for the Revolutionary Socialists. Meta Steinitz fled to Switzerland in 1939; her husband was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. Merkel himself emigrated to France in 1938, where he was temporarily interned. It was not until 1972 that he returned to Vienna with his wife, the painter Louise Merkel-Romée.