Anton Romako has been described as an artist who opened up new painterly possibilities of interpreting the visible world in a visionary and intuitive manner. From 1875, his work subtly changed conventional manners of depiction, towards a more meticulous, psychologising interpretation. The stylistic breaches went hand in hand with his chequered biography. Trained as a history painter in Munich and Vienna, Romako made a name for himself over two decades as a famous portraitist and eminent genre painter in Rome. Following his separation from his wife, the artist returned to Vienna in 1875 and executed works whose idiosyncratic combination of expressive lines and free painterly brushwork overtaxed his generation’s understanding of art. Find out more about the Anton Romako exhibition from the Leopold Museum’s website.
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What happens when an artist wants to be anonymous?