Rudolf Raimund Ballabene - vendere e comprare opere
19 February 1890, Zurndorf (Austria) - 22 August 1968, Vienna (Austria)
Rudolf Raimund Ballabene was an Austrian painter of the modern period, born the youngest of ten children in 1890, in what was then Hungary. To please his father, Ballabene studied German and Philosophy at the University of Prague, while also acting at the Royal German Theatre. After completing his studies, he worked as a journalist. It was only after his marriage to Elvira Wassermann that Ballabene devoted himself to painting. He painted landscapes, city views, flowers and horses with increasing success.
With the start of the Second World War, his artistic career which had begun so successfully was put on hold. An exhibition planned for 1941 had to be cancelled since all the paintings had been destroyed. In 1943 Ballabene was no longer permitted to work as an artist. Despite this, he continued to paint in secret in order to earn a living.
After the war, Ballabene and his wife moved to Vienna where he, like many others, had to rebuild a new life for themselves. With the support of the of the state of Burgenland, he succeeded in re-establishing himself in the art market. Lecture tours took him across the length and breadth of Austria, where he painted several pictures of the still unspoilt countryside. In 1946 he exhibited his works for the first time in Vienna’s Dorotheergasse, and from the mid-1950s, interest in Ballabene’s art grew steadily both at home and abroad. Under the impetus of a newly awakened creative urge he produced numerous new pictures, which could be viewed in venues such as the National Arts Club in New York (1960). Towards the end of his life and shortly before his death in 1968, Ballabene increasingly turned to abstract painting.