WORKS BY WALTER LANGHAMMER FROM A LONDON COLLECTION

SEVEN WORKS BY WALTER LANGHAMMER FROM A LONDON COLLECTION (LOTS 165-170)

WALTER LANGHAMMER (AUSTRIAN 1905 -1977)
Extensive view of a town by a river
Signed W Langhammer lower left
Oil on canvas
52 x 75 cm (20 1/2 x 29 1/2 in)

Born in Graz, Austria, Langhammer studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts where he was influenced by the vibrant palette and Expressionist technique of Oskar Kokoschka. With Hitler’s annexation of Austria he and his wife Käthe (née Urbach) travelled to Bombay. A former Indian pupil of Langhammer’s, Shirin Vimadala, had encouraged the painter to make the trip. But on their arrival the couple were arrested as enemy aliens and detained separately until 1941 when the British authorities concluded that neither posed a security threat. On their release Langhammer established a studio where he kept open house for promising young Indian painters including many who formed the Bombay Progressive Art Movement such as Ara, Raza, Husain, Souza and Raiba. Langhammer also encouraged the patronage of wealthy professionals to support such talents – doctors, lawyers and industrialists. Sayed Haider Raza recalled how Langhammer lent him his Bombay studio, and on his departure for Paris provided him with shoes and offered him his overcoat. Captivated by the bright Indian light, Langhammer travelled throughout the country to record the diversity of its people and its landscape. In the late 1940s he was commissioned by the Tata family to paint the Jamshedpur steel plant. During the three months he spent in the city he established the Jamshedpur School of Art, and the ground-breaking series of paintings that he produced of the plant celebrates the power of Indian industrial achievement following the country’s independence in 1947. Returning to Europe in the early 1960s, Langhammer settled in North London, where he met the Allens, who acquired the present works from him (lots 165 to 170)