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Known
principally as an art dealer, Otto Kallir also maintained a publishing
practice since his earliest days in Vienna. Art books and limited print
editions were the first publications in the Verlag Neuer Graphik, which
later became Rikola Verlag. The most famous of these early editions was
the portfolio Das graphische Werk von Egon Schiele [The Graphic Work of Egon Schiele],
which introduced the artist to a wider public. In 1923 Kallir opened
Neue Galerie, where he represented unknown Austrian artists such as
Schiele, Kokoschka, after his son Johannes, and published many literary
and art books under its imprint. With the Anschluss came interest in
Kallir from Nazi soldiers, who finally confiscated the family's
passports. Soon afterward, Kallir transferred ownership of the gallery
to his non-Jewish secretary and fled Vienna, traveling first to
Lucerne, Switzerland. For a very short time he attempted to transplant
the gallery to Paris under the name Galerie St. Etienne, but due to the
uncertainty of the future there, soon he left with his family for New
York. In 1940, a year after his arrival, he reopened the gallery that
still operates today.
Photograph of Otto Kallir in New York, courtesy of Galerie St. Etienne, NY. |