Georg Jung

Georg Jung was born on 31 December 1899 as son of the hotelier of the renowned Hotel de l'Europe in Salzburg. Jung discovered his passion for painting at an early age. Apart from taking a course in nude painting at the Kunstgewerbeschule Wien, he developed into a painter as an autodidact. In his youth he created a large number of sheets after illustrated books, especially battle scenes fascinated him. After the war and graduation from school, Jung moved to Vienna to study medicine and philosophy. Jung was a member of the Hagenbund from 1925 to 1938. After the death of his father in 1934, Georg Jung took over the management of the Hotel de l'Europe and decorated the interior himself with frescos and furniture. Although Jung considered himself more an artist than a hotelier, he managed the hotel until 1938. After the annexation of Austria to Germany, Jung was forced to sell the hotel below its value under pressure from the National Socialists. Jung continued to work in Salzburg in the following years, designing the sundial on the university building and a fresco in Franziskanergasse. The National Socialists finally declared his art to be degenerate, whereupon Jung was banned from exhibitions in 1942. From then on he was no longer allowed to present his drawings and paintings to the public. While Jung showed expressionist and cubist traits in his earlier works, his later work increasingly dealt with abstraction. In his works he developed a kinetic apparatus with continuously changing colour constellations - the Colormobile. In 1945 he joined the Vienna Secession, of which he remained a member until 1952. Works by Georg Jung can be seen today in several museums such as the Belvedere in Vienna.