Preparation For Kayak Training By Franz Reisz (austro-american, 1909 -1984 New York)

Here is his biography from Wikipedia (translated from German): Franz Reisz (born April 3, 1909, Vienna, Austria-Hungary; died March 1984, New York) was an Austrian-American illustrator. Franz Reisz worked as a graphic designer in Vienna. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, he had to flee to France. His wife Lili managed to escape to the USA, Franz Reisz's letters to Lili have survived since that time. After the German conquest of France in 1940, he was arrested in Paris in July 1941 and taken to the French internment camps of Beaune-la-Rolande and Meslay-du-Maine. The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs having requested the extradition of the Jews of the Vichy regime, Reisz was deported on June 25, 1942 via the Pithiviers transit camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was registered under the prisoner number 42447. In the concentration camp he worked in the office. In January 1945 he was evacuated to Mauthausen concentration camp and released at Ebensee concentration camp in May. His drawings and watercolors were created under the impression of what he experienced. Reisz emigrated to the United States. Reisz's Illustrative Works: Paul Ilg! The Daughter of the Bastille: A Romance of Filial Love. Rascher & Cie. AG, Zürich 1933; Mirjam Singer: Benni Soars to the Promised Land: A Jewish Children's Book. With many photos v. Franz Reisz. 1936; Claudette Bloch et al.: Testimonies on Auschwitz. Preface by Jean Cassou. Drawings by François Reisz. Edition of the Association of Auschwitz Deportees, Paris 1946. Published by: National Federation of Resistant and Patriotic Deportees and InterneesSeven Men: Austromarxism; a lecture series / Friends of Austrian Labour. Drawings: Franz Reisz. Price, New York 1949 Literature Edit Marina Stütz (Ed.): Surviving and Resisting. Cologne 1980 Janet Blatter, Sybil Milton: Art of the Holocaust. Introduction Henry Friedlander. Orbis, London 1982Sybille Goldmann, Myrah Adams Rösing: Art to Surviv: Drawn in Auschwitz. Ulm 1989 Edit web links.

Literature by and about Franz Reisz in the catalog of the German National Library Franz Reisz, in: The eternal holocaust, part 6, Deviant Art, February 2007 The Lili Reisz Collection, 1938-1949, at the United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumFranz Reisz, at the Documentary Archive of the Austrian Resistance; Online Wikipedia in German.
Inscription: signed and monogrammed by the artist, dated 1934, lower right.
Technique: gouache on paper. Original period black lacquer frame.
Dimensions: unframed W 21 7/8" x H 11 1/4" (55.5 x 28.5 cm), framed W 24 1/2" x H 13 3/4" (62 x 35 cm).
Condition: in very good condition.