(Linz 1894–1926)
“Der Abend”, titled, signed, dated Klemens Brosch 1925, pencil, pen, ink, watercolour on golden brown, toned paper, 12.3 x 63.3 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Upper Austria
Dorotheum Vienna, 25 May 2000, lot 80
Private Collection, London

In the recording log of the Upper Austrian Niedernhart mental hospital of 31 December 1923, the physician on duty noted:
“In 1914 he (Brosch) was administered morphine powder internally by a military doctor because of palpitations, fainting fits and weakness ... Since then, he has developed an addiction to morphine. Since 1915, he has been injecting it into himself; over time he has also begun using cocaine...”
Klemens Brosch has been addicted to morphine and cocaine for 12 years. He is tormented by terrifying hallucinations, he cannot sleep, feels persecuted, has a deadly fear of imaginary monsters, and feels that unbearable existential fear that eventually ends in suicide.

Notes on the oeuvre, exhibition reviews:
“The Tragedy of Klemens Brosch” – “Artist’s Career Ended in the Gas Mask” – “Gallows of a War Reporter” – “An Artist of Fragmentary Genius” – “Brosch – Lost Genius” – “Brosch or the Deadly Perfection of Technique” – “Who is Klemens Brosch? What is Surrealism?” – “Early-Ripened and Almost Forgotten ...”
These are just some of the headlines in the press of the time describing the artist’s life and work. All reviews share a similar perspective: a remarkable, prematurely curtailed, and outstandingly talented draughtsman from the first quarter of the twentieth century....

Elisabeth Nowak – Thaller, Klemens Brosch, Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt 1991, pp. 153, 241.