Hans Liska, Don Giovanni, Signed, Vienna, Salzburg, Gouache

Hans Liska

Vienna 1907 - 1983 Wertheim

Register Arie, Don Juan

Gouache on cardboard

Signed lower right, titled lower left

Image: 50 x 41 cm

Frame: 69 x 59 cm

Good original condition


Authenticity confirmed in writing.



Hans Liska attended business school and then worked as an office assistant. He earned extra money playing the piano, which enabled him to attend the Vienna School of Applied Arts. There he was a student of Berthold Löffler (a friend of Kokoschka).

He initially worked as a commercial artist in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and then attended the Munich School of Applied Arts under Emil Preetorius and Walther Teutsch.

Sponsored by Ullstein Verlag, he attended the Kunsthochschule am Steinplatz in Berlin in 1933 as a student of Ferdinand Spiegel. After the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the army in 1939 and became a photojournalist for a propaganda company and special squadron. His drawings from various war fronts appeared in many newspapers, including those in neutral countries. Two of his sketchbooks from 1942 (Junkers) and 1944 (Hans Liska) are now sought-after rarities. From 1933 until at least 1944, he was a press illustrator for the Berliner Illustri(e)rte Zeitung, for example for the special editions on the 1936 Olympic Games, and the propaganda newspaper Signal. He also produced a drawing of the "largest studio in the world," a huge hall that had been built in Baldham near Munich to a design by Albert Speer for Josef Thorak. This was where the powerful groups of figures for the March Field in Nuremberg were to be created. The painting shows how, based on a live model (in this case a horse), first a clay mold is created, then a four-meter-high model, and finally a colossal horse statue. A second illustration shows the transport of the finished horse figure to the railroad tracks for loading and transport to its destination.

After the end of the war, Liska remained in Germany. In 1945, his sketchbook from the war, which had been published in 1944 by Buhrbanck in Berlin, as well as all foreign-language editions of it, were placed on the "Prohibition List for Literature to be Removed" under number 17549.

In 1948, he married Elisabeth, née Lisl, née Schmid (* 1922) in Scheßlitz near Bamberg. The marriage produced two daughters, Angelika and Gabriele.

Liska put his talent for drawing to good use in Scheßlitz, working for the magazines Quick and Hörzu. For many years, he worked in advertising, particularly for the automotive industry at Daimler-Benz, but also for the Cologne-based companies Ford and Mülhens (4711). Other clients included Kaufhof AG, Degussa, Märklin, Quelle, Farbwerke Hoechst, Lederer Bierkontor, Sektkellerei Henkell, and Rauchbierbrauerei Schlenkerla (Bamberg). From 1960 onwards, he produced his city and landscape books with sketches from Salzburg, Bamberg, Cologne, Kulmbach, and Franconia.

Around 1970, the porcelain company Kaiser in Bad Staffelstein marketed numerous jugs, bowls, and mainly wall plates with over 200 Liska motifs of the cities of Königsberg, Danzig, Breslau, Berlin, Munich, Aachen, Bamberg, etc.


His fondness for Mozart's operas was reflected in the 1982 volume of drawings and pictures, Zauber der Bühne (Magic of the Stage). In an autobiography in the illustrated book Malerisches Kulmbach (Picturesque Kulmbach, 1985), Liska professed his admiration for Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso, and Max Ernst.