About the artist:

1882 - He was born in Prague on the 6th January as Eugen Kohn. 1894 - Around this year the family changed their name for Kahler from an unknown reason. Kahler’s father Max (1846–1920) was President of the commodity and stock exchange in Prague, President of the board of the privileged Czech Unionbanka, a big landowner and an industrialist. His mother Ottilie (1857–1937), née Bondy, came from a rich family, which established one of the first sugar refineries in Bohemia.The Kahler family, whose other two members were the younger brother Victor (1889–1963) and the older Felix (1880–1951), belonged to the German-speaking Jews from the Prague high society. Their large property enabled the Kahlers an extravagant lifestyle and travelling, as well as patron activities for the benefit of artists and writers from Czechlands .All family members regularly visited museums,exhibitions of works of art, concerts as well as opera and theatre performances, not only in Prague but also in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Vienna. Apart from that, the liberal and hospitable family often played host to well-known and important personalities of culture, politics and economy. Their guests were also invited for longer stays, for instance during summer months or the hunting season. For these purposes they especially employed their mansion in Svinaře near Karlštejn, where the family used to spend the summer. 1911 On August 8th Eugen’s father was raised to the knightly estate for his merits in the field of culture and economy in Bohemia. From the non all family members were allowed to use the mark of nobility “knight”. 1898 Eugen Kahler paints his first oil paintings. Around 1898 he takes his first lessons of drawing at Heinrich Jakesch in Prague. 1900 Eugen’s favourite cousin Erich Kahler, whom he became very close friend with, comes to visit him in Svinaře during the summer months. Erich, who later became a well-known writer, intensively looked after Eugen’s artistic estate, when Eugen had died. The first symptoms of tuberculosis make Eugen Kahler undergo a kidney operation in Berlin in October 1900. The follow-up curative stay is spent in San Remo, where he stays until March 1901. He paints here nature sketches and makes trips, for example to Geneva, Monte Carlo and Nice. 1901 From April 1901 Eugen Kahler’s permanent address is in Munich, where he studies drawing at the private school of Heinrich Knirr. He as well attends courses of drawing of nudes and sketches of heads. 1902 In March 1902 Eugen Kahler travels together with his family to Venice. From April 1902 he takes additional evening lessons of drawing in the Studio of Hugo Steiner in Prague. In Munich Eugen Kahler belongs to the frequent guests of the Café Stefanie in Schwabing, which was a meeting point of visual artists in around 1900. He entered here into closer relations with artists such as Gino de Finetti, Georg Kars, Hugo Steiner-Prag and Albert Weisgerber, with poets Ernst Collin and Ernst Stern, and with future art historians Heinz Braun and Friedrich Rintelen. 1903 In February 1903 Eugen Kahler meets Hans Purrmann. From May to July 1903 he stays in Munich nursing home Neuwittelsbach. Then he leaves for Svinaře, where he stays until October. He receives visits of Hans Purrmann and Albert Weisgerber. On October 30, 1903 Eugen Kahler is admitted to the painting class of Franz von Stuck at the Academy of Munich. His classmates are Willi Geiger, Georg Kars, Hermann Lissmann and Hans Purrmann. 1904 In the spring he travels with his parents to Nice. During the summer he is visited by Hans Purrmann and Jakob and Bertha Weleminský in Svinaře. 1905 He establishes the firstcontactswithEmilUtitz. From March to July he takes irregular private tutorials at painter Baron Hugo von Habermann. In May he undergoes another operation in Berlin after which he convalesces in Travemünde. In August he travels around Belgium (Brussels, Chaudfontaine, Lüttich, Oostende). He spends September in Svinaře, where he is visited by his cousin Erich. In October he leaves for Berlin, where he stays until summer 1906. 1906 In the first half of the year he travels to Vienna, Prague, Munich and Paris. In August 1906 he convalesces in Bad Gastein and Svinaře. From autumn to summer 1908 he stays in Paris to study new French painting here together with his friends Walter Bondy, Rudolf Levy, Jules Pascin, Hans Purrmann and Albert Weisgerber. 1907 In the spring of that year Eugen Kahler attends courses on the topic of the nude in the wild at a private Paris painting school. Apart from that he studies old masters in Louvre and impressionists in Musée du Luxembourg. He meets the circle of the Café du Dôme, his artistic colleagues Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann, Walter Bondy, Rudolf Grossmann, Rudolf Levy, Oskar Moll, Jules Pascin and Hans Purrmann, art collector Wilhelm Uhde and artists Elisabeth Epstein and Sonia Terková, who got married to Robert Delaunay in 1909. In Paris he takes part in exhibitions in Indépendants and Salon d’Automne and in Munich in Sezession. 1908 A new attack of the lung disease requires Kahler to stay in a desert climate. On his doctors’ recommendation, he travels around Egypt and stops at Assouan, Luxor, Assiout and Cairo from mid January to the end of March 1908. Shortly after his return in April 1908, Eugen Kahler visits renowned sculptor August Rodin in his Paris studio. In the summer Kahler is visited by Heinz Braune in Svinaře. 1909 From mid October 1908 until the beginning of February 1909 he lives a secluded life in Brussels and paints intensively. In the spring he is on his travels and together with his mother and friendly painters, such as Olga Adlerová, he leaves for Italy. From March to the beginning of June 1909 he again resides in Paris. In June he visits his younger brother Victor in London, where he studies, and after that he convalesces in Oostende. He spends the summer in Svinaře, where he stays until mid October. There he is visited by Erich Kahler, Georg Kars and young writer Max Brod. At the beginning of December he leaves for his firsttouraroundTunisiaandAlgeria,whichlaststillthespringof1910. 1910 In March Eugen Kahler is joined by his mother Ottilie and older brother Felix in Tunisia. In April 1910 they travel together around Spain (Madrid, Toledo and Barcelona). From May to the end of August 1910 Eugen Kahler stays in London – Chelsea. In June he is visited there by Hans Purrmann. On the way to his summer stay in Svinaře, Kahler stops in Munich, where he meets Albert Weisgerber and probably visits the exhibition of Islamic art, just like many other artists, for instance Vasilij Kandinskij, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Hans Purrmann and Albert Weisgerber. In the summer months Eugen gets his own mare in Svinaře and he paints numerous sketches of horses. He stays there until October. In addition, an extraordinary number of guests come for a visit to Svinaře mansion, among whom we can findhisartisticcolleaguesOlga Adlerová, Hans Purrmann and Albert and Margarete Weisgerber. A remarkable event is Kahler, Hans Purrmann and Albert Weisgerber’s visit to Willi Nowak’s mansion in Mníšek by Prague. There they meet Alfred Kubin, as well as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, members of the avant-garde art club Die Brücke. In September 1910 Eugen Kahler’s work is represented by three oil paintings and four drawings at the second exhibition of the Neue Künstlervereinigung Munich. This exhibition then tours to other German towns. From October 1910 to May 1911 he again resides in Munich. In November 1910 he leaves for his second tour around Algeria and Tunisia. 1911 A new fit of his disease in March forces him to cancel his planned tour with cousin Erich around northern Africa. Instead, he has togo to the Munich nursing home Neuwittelsbach. From here he travels to the Swiss sanatorium Grand Hotel in Leysin. He begins writing his autobiographical novella Prague Jewish Story. The period from July to August 1911 is spent in a nursing home in Hohenhonnef on Rhine. He suffers from occasional disorders of the right optic nerve. At the end of August he meets painter Gabriele Münter, who was then Vasilij Kandinski’s girlfriend, in nearby Bonn. In September and October, as usually, he stays in Svinaře, where he is visited by Alfred Kubin. In October 1911 the firstKahler’ssoloexhibitiontakesplaceintheModernGalleryofHeinrichThannhauserinMunich.Itisrepeatedin December of the same year in the Art Salon of Ludwig Schames in Frankfurt am Main. Due to Kahler’s illness the organization of the exhibition is taken over by his friends Albert and Margareta Weisgerber. In the months of November and December Eugen Kahler is found at his parents in Prague, where he is visited by his artistic friends Georg Kars and Hans Purrmann. From 6th December 1911 his state of health becomes worse rapidly and on 13th December 1911 he dies in his parents’ house in Prague. The funeral service and the funeral take place on 15th December 1911 in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague– Strašnice. On December 18th the first exhibition of the alman accircle “Der Blaue Reiter” is opened in Munich, where two Kahler’s works of art from the property of Vasilij Kandinski are displayed posthumously. These two pieces are the Garden of Love (Liebesgarten) and The Bathing (Badende). The exhibition tours around other German towns even in the following year. Vasilij Kandinski writes an obituary to his deceased colleague. It comes out in May 1912 in the almanac “Der Blaue Reiter“ erscheint.