Aloys Zötl Explained

Aloys Zötl (4 December 1803 – 21 October 1887) was an Austrian painter and master dyer.[1]

Biography

Aloys Zötl was born in Freistadt in Upper Austria. He is notable for his painting of fantastical animals and other natural history subjects.[2] [3] Decades after his death in 1887 in Eferding, Zötl's work was re-discovered by surrealist André Breton, who recognized a surrealist aesthetic in it. Breton wrote: "…Lacking any biographical details about the artist, one can only indulge one's fantasies in imagining the reasons which might have induced this workman from Upper Austria, a dyer by profession, to undertake so zealously between 1832 and 1887 the elaboration of the most sumptuous bestiary ever seen."[4]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Reitinger, Franz . Kleiner Atlas der österreichischen Gemütlichkeit 1800-1918 . 2003 . Ritter . 978-3-85415-340-5 . 85 .
  2. Book: Standish, Peter. Understanding Julio Cortázar . 2001. 1-57003-390-0.
  3. Book: Mariotti, Giovanni . Le Bestiaire D'Aloys Zotl, 1831-1887 . 1979. 2-85108-217-5.
  4. Book: Breton, André . Aloys Zötl in Surrealism and Painting . 1956.