Hans Tietze

Hans Tietze was an art historian, critic, and civil servant who fostered modern art in Vienna in the first decades of the twentieth century as a co-founder of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der modernen Kunst in Wien (The Vienna Society for the Advancement of Modern Art) and as a major collector of European artists.

Born in Prague to a Jewish family, Tietze attended one of the city’s prestigious German state schools prior to the family’s move to Vienna in 1893. There he studied law at the University of Vienna from 1898. Tietze often visited Paris, where he made his first art purchases, including works on paper by James Ensor and Odilon Redon. In later decades he continued to buy artworks from Parisian galleries, such as a drawing by Henri Matisse (Reclining Female Nude, ca. 1913–14; Albertina, Vienna) and oil paintings by Fernand Léger (Village Landscape, 1912–13; Belvedere, Vienna) and Henri le Fauconnier (Seminude with Bunches of Roses, ca. 1902, and Fish Still Life with Lemon, 1921; both Belvedere, Vienna).

Between 1900 and 1903 Tietze studied art history at the University of Vienna under the mentorship of Alois Riegl, Julius von Schlosser, and Franz Wickoff. Along with his wife Erica Conrat, the first woman to earn a doctorate in art history at the University of Vienna, Tietze became a member of the Vienna School of Art History. In 1906 Tietze joined a large-scale research project that sought to catalogue all monuments and cultural heritage sites in Austria. The results were published in a dozen volumes of Österreichische Kunsttopographie (Austrian Cultural Topography)that Tietze edited and co-authored between 1908 and 1914.

Together the Tietzes built an art collection that included substantial holdings of works on paper by contemporary Austrian and German artists, such as George Ehrlich, Gerhart Frankl, Johannes Itten, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, George Kolbe, and Egon Schiele among many others. In 1909 they commissioned Kokoschka to produce their double portrait (Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat; Museum of Modern Art, New York). The Tietzes also sat for busts by Ehrlich (Erika Tietze-Conrat, 1928 and Hans Tietze, 1931; both Belvedere, Vienna).

Following World War I and the consequent dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tietze used his numerous professional positions to advocate for the creation of a vibrant contemporary art scene in the newborn state of Austria. In addition to becoming editor of the art journal Die bildenden Künste between 1919 and 1922, Tietze joined the recently established State Ministry for Internal Affairs and Education, where he developed a plan for overarching museum reform to transform the imperial collections into modern national museums. By merging the print collections of the Hofsbibliothek (Imperial Library) and the Albertina, for example, Tietze made it possible for them to sell duplicates and thus create funds for new art purchases.

Although Tietze’s position at the Ministry ended in 1925, he continued to promote contemporary art in Vienna through his work at the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der modernen Kunst in Wien (Vienna Society for the Advancement of Modern Art), which he had co-founded along with his wife and other cultural figures in 1923. Under his leadership, the Society organized groundbreaking international exhibitions through collaborations with museums, galleries, private collectors, and artists across Europe to bring the latest trends in modern art to Vienna and offer works for sale. The Internationale Kunstausstellung (International Art Exhibition) of 1924, for instance, featured works by Georges Braque, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, and Jean Metzinger from the Galerie Léonce Rosenberg in Paris; paintings by Marie Laurencin and Pablo Picasso from the Galerie Paul Rosenberg in Paris; and works by Marc Chagall and Max Pechstein from the Galerie van Diemen in Berlin, in addition to works from numerous other galleries, museums, and private collections. On a similar model, the exhibition “Die Kunst in unserer Zeit”in 1930 brought together modern painting, graphic arts, applied art, architecture, and music from galleries, private collections, and artists’ estates across Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

From 1932 the Tietzes frequently visited the United States and immigrated there in 1938 following the confiscation of the family’s property under Nazi law in Austria. With the help of American students, the Tietzes managed to smuggle some of their artworks from Austria to the United States, including Kokoschka’s double portrait, which they sold to the Museum of Modern Art in 1939.