Untitled

Provenance:
From the University of Regina, President's Art Collection, Shumiatcher Donation. Collection of Dr. Morris C. Shumiatcher, O.C., S.O.M., Q.C. and Dr. Jacqui Clay Shumiatcher, O.C., S.O.M.
Notes:
Joseph Sepp Hodlmoser was born in 1923 in Salzburg, Austria, where his father was steward of the Hohensalzburg Fortress. Growing up in isolation, with his accommodations and his art studio in the castle, led Hodlmoser to be quite eccentric and nonconformist. He was an autodidact and self taught as an artist. Like Jean-Michel Basquiat a generation later, Hodlmoser was in every way divergent from the art establishment, working with non-traditional materials, rejecting technical and aesthetic traditions, and creating a polarizing body of work. He "conquered modernity on his own terms" said Nicholas Schaffer, curator at the Salzburg Museum, when noting that without Hodlmoser, "Salzburg Modernism would be lacking a strong and refreshing colour." Sepp Hodlmoser fell ill with yellow fever during World War II, while a prisoner of the Soviet Union, and poor health affected him throughout his life. In the mid 1960s he was stricken with leukaemia, and he died in Salzburg, in 1967. His artistic creative period lasted a mere twelve years.