Harlfinger’s color dramatics are unmistakable. The expressive power of his paintings are based on their meaningful color design, whose strong contouring results in raised areas.
At first, the artist focused on portraits. His importance for art history lies in his landscape paintings, however, on which he focused soon afterwards.
Between 1892 and 1894, Harlfinger attended the painting school Strehblow at the Vienna Academy, subsequently studying at the Munich Academy under Nikolaus Gysis and Carl von Marr until 1899. He then worked in Mödling. His study trips took him to Brittany, Sweden, Bielsko-Biała and Venice. In 1906, he became a member of the Vienna Secession, acting as its president between 1917 and 1919. From 1917 onwards, he taught at the Vienna Academy for Women. He cooperated in designing the cellar of the town hall in Vienna. In 1918, he was a war painter in Lublin. He was awarded the Austrian State Prize in 1930.
In 1924, the poet Robert Musil attended two Secession exhibitions, commenting that what he found striking about “Richard Harlfinger’s landscapes is that they present the image from a dominating total impression ...... just as you would experience sudden joy in reality.”
Works at:
Belvedere, Vienna
Vienna Museum
Leopold Museum, Vienna
Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten
