Painting by Roland Strasser
ROLAND STRASSER (Austrian, April 24,1895 - July 27, 1974)
Roland Strasser, an
Austrian painter of Basque descent, was born in Vienna in 1895. He was
one of the great painter/adventurers of the early 20th century, and one
of the last Orientalist romantics. His energetic paintings and drawings
captured and portrayed the lives of subjects from regions and cultures
still considered “exotic” by European viewers of the era. Once described
by an admirer as “a strange, restless painter, who disappears for
years…” Strasser was known for painting subjects that were difficult or
even dangerous to paint.
Strasser first
studied art with his father – whose family name was Quiriqez -- a member
of the Viennese Sucession movement who taught at the Academy of Fine
Arts and was known for his small scale polychrome ceramic sculptures and
also for a bronze of Marc Antony that he created for the 1900 Paris
World Exhibition. Strasser’s older brother Benjamin was also a painter
and graphic artist. At the age of 17, after completing his studies at a
Realschule, Roland Strasser accompanied his father on a trip to Egypt.
Strasser next studied
with Rudolf Jettmar and Julius Schmidt at the Vienna Academy of Fine
Arts between 1911 and 1915. He was then assigned as war artist for the
Imperial War Press. Roland then briefly worked as a lithographer and
illustrator. In 1919 he traveled to Holland where painted at Volendam
and earned enough money selling paintings to be able to travel the
following year.
In 1920 Strasser
traveled first to Siam (Thailand), then Java (Indonesia) and finally New
Guinea. Along with another adventurer – whose intention was to shoot
exotic birds – Strasser journeyed to the remote and forbidding interior
of New Guinea. After being abandoned by his companion he spent four
months in a Papuan village. He eventually made his way back to Java, but
all of his drawings were lost. He then spent eighteen months at Bali
where he met Willem Dooyewaard, a Dutch artist, who became his student
and frequent travel companion.
In the autumn of 1922
Strasser traveled to Peking, and from there to the province of Shansi,
where he made studies of peasants. He the continued on to Mongolia, and
by 1924 was in the province of Szetshwan and finally the mountains of
Tibet. As an artist, he used his rendering skills to render activities,
postures and psychological states of his subjects. The works he made
during this trip – both drawings and paintings – were shown in London by
a Mr. W. B. Patterson, and the proceeds from their sale provided
Strasser with funds for his next trip.
Strasser traveled
through Bombay, Nagpur and Calcutta, then into the foothills of the
Himilayas where he planned another trek into Tibet. At Kalimpong he
assembled a caravan, and in January of 1925 he crossed the Kula Pass,
and 10 months later reached Urga (now Ulaanbaatar) in Mongolia. After
spending a year in Urga, Soviet authorities arrested Strasser as a spy.
His diary and maps were confiscated, but he was allowed to keep his
paintings and drawings.
In the winter of 1926
he travelled through the Gobi desert into China. He then took a train
to Peking where all of the drawings he had made in Tibet and Mongolia
were pillaged and destroyed by the troops of General Chang So-ling.
Strasser travelled next to Tientsin, and then to Japan where he visited
Kobe and Kyoto. Eight months later he took the Trans-Siberian railway to
Vienna to visit his ailing father. After his father’s death in October,
1927 he remained in Europe and was the subject of an exhibition at the
Berheim Jeune Gallery in Paris in February, 1928.
In 1930 he published
"The Mongolian Horde," an account of five years of his travels in China
and Mongolia, with 21 sketches included. In the foreward to his book,
Strasser wrote:
“During five years of
wandering in the heart of Asia, I accepted my experiences and
impressions like such a child…But now that it is over, I feel the
impulse to note down and retain, while they are still vivid, some at
least of the strange and thrilling impressions that crowd upon me, in
the shape of a few descriptive and open sketches.”
After additional travels, Strasser returned to Bali in 1934 where he stayed until 1944.
For years he had a
studio in Kintamani above Lake Batur. He disliked visitors, and would
leave his studio through a secret back door when not in the mood to
entertain visitors.
Roland Strasser died in Santa Monica California on July 27, 1974.
