Hans Böhler, who came from a wealthy industrial family, attended the private art school Jaschke in Vienna and briefly also the Academy of Fine Arts. He was in close contact with Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann and Egon Schiele. In 1908 and 1909 he took part in the Kunstschau exhibitions, and in 1910 he became a member of the Neukunstgruppe around Schiele and was thus officially accepted into the circle of the Viennese avantgarde. Of his numerous journeys within and outside Europe during his life, those to China (1910) and to South and North America (1913/14) are particularly noteworthy, leaving traces in the motifs and style of his painting. In 1929 a biography on the life and work of Hans Boehler was published by Arthur Rössler. Even before 1937, when he moved to New York for a few years, Boehler exhibited internationally (e.g. in Germany, Sweden, Italy, France). Among the important exhibitions in the U.S.A. are those at the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge (1937) and numerous personal and collective exhibitions at the Artists' Gallery in New York. In 1974, Boehler's works were shown at the Columbia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. "Boehler combined intense colour, often applied in vehement brushstrokes, with a planar pictorial composition." Boehler's works can be found in the collections of the Belvedere, the Leopold Museum as well as the Albertina, the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien and the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, among others.
Literature
A. Roessler, „Der Maler Hans Boehler“, Vienna 1930; Exhib.-cat. „Hans Boehler“, Galerie Martin Suppan, Vienna 1990; Exhib.-cat. "Hans Boehler", Kunsthandel Giese & Schweiger, Vienna 2014; References: Österreichisches Künstlerlexikon / Schmidt [Lexicon of Austrian Artists]; Kunst des 20. Jh. / Bestandskatalog der Österreichischen Galerie [Art of the 20th Century / Inventory Catalogue of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna]