Important Notice

Born in Austria in 1905, Walter Langhammer studied and taught painting before he was forced to escape to India at the onset of World War II. His wife Kathe Urbach was Jewish and his own artwork was outspokenly critical of the Nazi regime, which posed a threat to the couple’s lives. They arrived in Bombay in 1938 with the help of Langhammer’s former student Shirin Vimdalal. He was appointed as the first Art Director of the Times of India... Born in Austria in 1905, Walter Langhammer studied and taught painting before he was forced to escape to India at the onset of World War II. His wife Kathe Urbach was Jewish and his own artwork was outspokenly critical of the Nazi regime, which posed a threat to the couple’s lives. They arrived in Bombay in 1938 with the help of Langhammer’s former student Shirin Vimdalal. He was appointed as the first Art Director of the Times of India soon after. He also became chairman of Bombay Art Society the same year. Alongside fellow émigrés Rudolf von Leyden and Emmanuel Schlesinger, Langhammer had a seismic impact on India’s incipient modern art scene. He offered both guidance and financial support to a generation of young artists, including founding members of the Progressive Artists’ Group such as S H Raza and Sadanand Bakre. The Langhammers’ apartment on Napean Sea Road in South Bombay became a lively hub of artistic exchange, where artists like K K Hebbar, H A Gade, and M F Husain were introduced to Western modernism and contemporary European art trends. These references encouraged them to forge their own new modernist language that was rooted in the diversity of post-Independence India.

Langhammer often painted landscapes and pastoral scenes in a German expressionist style. While the present lot depicts a scene from Venice, his radiant brushstrokes indicate the profound impact that India’s vibrancy and light had on his art. Reviewing one of Langhammer’s exhibitions in 1945, von Leyden observed, “At the opening I overheard the artist say to a visitor ‘Colour is what I am after.’ [...] for years he has struggled to break down the fence and reach the realm of pure colour. The struggle has become very apparent during the last three or four years and I would not be surprised if the impact of Indian light and colour on his artistic temperament has accelerated the process and will continue to influence it…” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The Banquet Years”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 61)

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