Portrait of Composer Josef Matthias Hauer

Christian SchadWW-1927-143400

1927·Oil on wood·61 × 50.2 cm (24 × 19 3/4 in.)

<p>Christian Schad met the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer in Vienna in 1926 yet chose to portray him in front of a cross section of the Eiffel Tower. For Schad, this structure recalled Hauer’s chromatic music—based on the 12-tone scale—through its blend of aesthetics and mathematics.</p> <p>In the late 1920s, Schad quickly emerged as a leading artist of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. These avant-garde artists introduced portraiture marked by icy precision and razor-sharp detail, making pointed cultural critiques. Their works’ startling clarity stood in stark contrast to the exuberant color and expressiveness that had dominated German painting over the previous two decades.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1927
Medium: Oil on wood
Dimensions: 61 × 50.2 cm (24 × 19 3/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Christian Schad

Artist

Christian Schad

Photography

Christian Schad was a German painter and printmaker central to the development of New Objectivity in the 1920s. Working primarily in oils and adopting a sharp-focus realism, he depicted Berlin's nightlife, urban landscapes, and psychological portraits with unflinching precision. His technical mastery of glazing and his cool, detached treatment of subject matter, particularly in depicting cabaret scenes and social subjects, established him as one of the movement's defining voices. Schad's work combines formal control with an acerbic social gaze that resists sentimentality.

Miesbach, Germany

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