Born in East Prussia, now Poland, the painter Oskar Gawell produced a powerful and impressive body of work that remains largely unknown today. The first exhibition of the Free Secession in Berlin in 1914 showed his works hanging alongside those of Max Oppenheimer and Pablo Picasso; now they are in the archives of private collections and in the Belvedere, Albertina and Leopold Museum in Vienna.

Gawell—a student of Lovis Corinth, confidant of the artist group Die Brücke and member of the Vienna Secession—fled to Vienna in 1938 and became an important figure in the post-war Austrian art world. For all the artist’s constant use of different techniques, absorbed influence from various artistic movements and continued stylistic development, his paintings retain an utterly distinct quality and character. The present volume breathes new life into artist Oskar Gawell’s work and career.