Jean Welz (1900-1975)

FEMALE NUDE, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, SIGNED, 610 by 420mm

Esmé Berman (1996:494) describes Jean Welzs career as a solitary adventure, unrelated to surrounding trends and fashions. There is nothing of Africa imprinted on his paintings, there is little that is truly modern, even in his abstract style. It is the delicate balance between reason and emotion, the impeccable technique and the additives of sensitivity and meditative insight which permitted him to pursue a path outside the main line of SA artistic development and yet retain widespread regard as one of the countrys most distinguished artists.

Welzs approach to his art is best reflected in a letter he had written to his brother, a gallery owner in Salzburg, before an exhibition there in 1965. He explained that his paintings were documents of his soul and said that his objective was to create painterly poems.

Hans (Jean) Max Friedrich Welz was born in Salzburg, Austria, one of five children, to a Roman Catholic family in 1900. His family was the fourth generation Welzes owning a framing and gilding workshop in Salzburg. He graduated from the Realschule secondary school and moved to Vienna to study architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts under Josef Hoffman at the start of the First World War. Although Austria suffered greatly during the war, it was a period when the arts, philosophy and the field of architecture flourished.

Welz was interested in art and music from an early age, becoming skilled in the family business of framing and gilding, and learning to play the violin. At the family workshop Welz came into contact with a number of Viennas renowned artists, art collectors and architects. He also enrolled for a course on art education for children while studying architecture (Miles, 1997).