Franz von Bayros (Agram/Zagreb 1866-1924 Vienna)
"Schwestern der Salome" ["Sisters of Salome"]
probably before 1920
mixed media (chalk, watercolor, charcoal, and pencil) on lightly structured firm wove paper
74,2 x 97,3 cm
lower right signed in pencil "bayros"
Provenance:
probably G[erta] Rannacher Kunsthandlung und Verlag, Vienna (stamp verso)
Exhibition History:
"Alfred Kubin: Confessions of a Tortured Soul," Leopold Museum, Vienna, April 16 - July 24, 2022
Publication History:
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, ed., Alfred Kubin: Confessions of a Tortured Soul (Vienna: Leopold Museum, 2022), pgs. 113 (ill.), 319.
Discussion:
The scandalous Austrian artist
Franz von Bayros was an important figure in the Decadent movement who was known
for his phantasmagoric erotic illustrations and is often compared to Félicien Rops and Aubrey
Beardsley. Bayros was born in 1866 into
an aristocratic family in Zagreb. At the age of 17, he was admitted to
the Vienna Academy. In 1897, he moved to
Munich, where he continued his studies and had his first major exhibition, in
1904, which was well-received; this success was followed by study trips to
Paris (where he was influenced by the Rococo) and to Italy. After publication of his controversial
portfolio of erotica, Erzählungen am Toilettentische [Tales from the Dressing Tables], he
was arrested and exiled from Germany in 1911, returning to Vienna. Thereafter, Bayros felt increasingly
marginalized and alienated; he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1924.
His contemporary, the writer Rudolf Hans Bartsch, regarded this drawing, "Sisters of Salome," as perhaps Bayros' most remarkable work ("es ist vielleicht das Heißeste"), a "phantasm" of tension "between holiness and perversion."
The main motif is the round
dance of the four nude female figures, the Salome sisters. And the drawing is formally characterized by
elegantly curved lines that create the graceful poses of this ecstatic
dance. Princess Salome herself sits on
the throne in the background as the dancers celebrate the cruelty of the act in
dark sensuality, while the head of John the Baptist is barely visible on the
tray that the sisters carry above their heads. From the throne to the
front hall, a sea of rose petals adorns the steps of the stairs and symbolizes
the blood of the deed. Bayros thus manages to combine pain, cruelty, beauty,
and eroticism in this masterful drawing.
Together with five other drawings on the subject of Salome, this drawing was published, circa 1920, as a heliogravure in the portfolio entitled Bayros Mappe. The Daulton collection also owns a copy of this portfolio:
