As a founding member of the Vienna Secession, König was part of the elite of painters in Vienna at the turn of the century. Together with Josef Engelhart, Rudolf Bacher and Maximilian Lenz, he formed his own circle among the Secessionists. König was known for his figurative scenes, and his landscape paintings seduce with their particularly soft, aromatic impressions.
He studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and from 1878 to 1883 at the Vienna Academy under Christian Griepenkerl, August Eisenmenger and Carl von Blaas, followed by time as a student at the Munich Academy. Study trips to Italy, Germany, Spain and France followed. He designed posters, contributed drawings to the magazine “Ver Sacrum” but was also for the interior decoration of the 1st Secession exhibition in 1897. From 1898 to 1899, he designed wall paintings for a house in Hinterbrühl built by Josef Olbrich. Around 1900, König was working on two paintings intended as wall hangings for the music room at Karl Wittgenstein’s city palace in the then Alleestraße, now Argentinierstraße.
As a founding member, König took part in numerous exhibitions of the Secession until 1939. Between 1901 and 1904, his works were included in the Great Arts Exhibition in Dresden and between 1901 and 1909 at the Munich Crystal Palace. In 1911, he also exhibited at the International Arts Exhibition in Rome.
In 1929, on his 70th birthday, the Vienna Secession honored Friedrich König as their oldest member by holding an omnibus exhibition of his works. Josef Engelhart wrote about him: “Any viewer standing in front of Friedrich König’s paintings feels instantly that this is a deeply internal artist, a painter savoring nature with almost feminine tenderness, a poet using pen and brush to narrate his dreams.”
Works at:
Belvedere, Vienna
Vienna Museum
Leopold Museum, Vienna
