Watercolor and pencil
Signed lower right as well as titled "Osterfest Lavra Kiew" lower left. On paper. 34,5 x 39,4 cm (13,5 x 15,5 in), the full sheet

PROVENANCE: Dr. Heinrich Scherlag, Dresden (acquired directly from artist).
Alice Hagängen, Sweden.

After architecture studies at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Otto Wagner, where Oskar Laske had the opportunity to meet Gustav Klimt and other artists of the Secession, he was active as an architect for a couple of years before he increasingly turned to painting as of 1904. In 1905 he exhibited for the first time with the Vienna Hagenbund, where he mostly showed architectural sketches and drawings. From 1908 to 1910 Laske abandoned architecture as a subject of his art and began to create an oeuvre dominated by landscapes, city views, genre scenes and animal painting. His merry and imaginative style comes to full bloom in his city views, which he executed with a great love for the detail in watercolors on his numerous journeys through Europe. Drawings by Oskar Laske are, among others, in possession of the Albertina and the Museums Leopold, Vienna. [JS].