Arthur Paunzen

Arthur Paunzen was a Jewish Austrian etcher, engraver and illustrator.

He was born on 4 February in Vienna, to Leopold Paunzen and his wife Hermine, née Kuhn, who were Jewish. He studied with Ludwig Koch in Vienna and in France, at the Académie Julian, under Jean-Pierre Laurens. Later, he traveled throughout Italy, studying art and architecture. In 1918, shortly after he began exhibiting, he married Cornelia Westreich (1894-1971), who was also Jewish, in Vienna.

An interest in music led him to create a number of works that convey music as symbolic images. For instance, depicting Beethoven's Eroica Symphony as nude horse-backed lancers, surrounded by clouds and flanked by a trumpeter who might be Death. He also created a series based on Gustav Mahler's song cycle, "Das Lied von der Erde".

His interests extended to literature, including a series of etchings depicting Raskolnikov, from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

In 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, he and his wife moved to Great Britain.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023