[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

FRANK, Hans [1884–1948]

“Landschaft mit Fluss” [“Landscape with River”]

ca1925

woodcut print on laid paper / 10 1/4 inches by 7 3/4 inches (image)

The prints of Austrian artist Hans Frank are not as familiar to U.S. audiences as the comparable work by John Edgar Platt. Our search for information led to a British site, to which we’ll defer:

Twin brothers Hans Frank and Leo Frank were born in Vienna on 13 May 1884. They were both students of Anton von Kenner at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna and Franz Rumpler at the Vienna Academy. Hans Frank was a painter and printmaker, working in both aquatint and colour woodcut and he exhibited at the Vienna Secession in 1912 and 1913. During World War I he served as an artillery regiment officer but after the war he travelled extensively through southern France, Italy, and Austria. Frank was awarded numerous prizes, including the Golden State Medal in 1908, the Silver Medal of the City Graz, the Royal Sakson Medal for Art and Science, the Staatlicher Ehrenpreis, the Prize of the City Vienna in 1931, the Goldene Ehrenmedaille des Wiener Künstlerhauses in 1934, the Waldmüllerpreis für Malerei, and the Kriehuber-Preis der Stadt Wien in 1944. He was a member of the Künstlerhaus in Vienna, the London Society of Graver Printers, and the California Society of Printmakers. His favourite motifs were birds and forest animals depicted in their natural habitats.

Compare Frank’s “Landschaft…” with Platt’s “Building the Trawler”, both of which profit from the influence of Japanese ukiyo-e.