Lot 58
Einstein Albert 1879 - 1955 A letter from Albert Einstein to renown portrait painter, John Hansegger
Single page TLS, 8.5" x 11". On embossed Princeton letterhead. Signed by Albert Einstein, as "A. Einstein", and dated "den 19. Marz 1953" Expected fold, else fine condition. Accompanied by the post marked envelope 6.5"x 3.5" with the top torn off and a bit grubby.
A short letter typed by Albert Einstein to his friend, John Hansegger, the reknown portrait painter having painted Picasso's portrait from a live sitting - a rare honor, with a brilliant result. Hansegger was then challenged by Picasso to invent his own style to which he then created the unprecedented Abstract Parallels series, a style he would continue to refine for the rest of his life. After he was invited to hold a one-man show at the Princeton University Museum in 1953, where he painted Albert Einstein from life, he elected to stay in America.
Hansegger said that the sessions with Einstein were the most memorable of his career. Hansegger and Einstein conversed in their Swiss-Deutsch dialect. Hansegger remembered that Einstein told delicious Swiss Jokes and even played on the violin for him. Hansegger reported "Einstein loved classical music and said that Mozart's music could be a proof of God and that perhaps by the next century science and religious belief might actually converge."
The letter translated in full reads:
"Dear Mr. Hansegger:
Thank you for the gorgeous blossoms [flowers]. If you would like to visit me as a harmless civilian, I would certainly be pleased.
With warm greetings,
Albert Einstein"
Like his friend Pablo Picasso, Swiss-American painter John Konstantin Hansegger (1908 - 1989) was never content to limit his reach to the movement of the moment, continually adding new styles to his repertoire, several of them of his own invention.
In his native Switzerland he was a child prodigy, influenced by Ferdinand Hodler and Albert Anker and garnering acclaim for his realistic landscapes and portraits. By 1932 he had found his way to the avant-garde scene in Paris, encouraged by Picasso, Leger and Mondrian as he mastered cubism and surrealism. In 1936 he painted his famous portrait of Pablo Picasso from a live sitting - a rare honor, with a brilliant result. Then, challenged by Picasso to invent his own style, Hansegger created the unprecedented Abstract Parallels series, a style he would continue to refine for the rest of his life.
After the war he exhibited in the rigorous avant-garde Galerie Nierendorf Gallery in New York, along with Klee and Kandinsky, before embarking on extensive travels to Israel, Ecuador (where he originated his "Family of Man" series), South Africa and Japan. After he was invited to hold a one-man show at the Princeton University Museum in 1953, where he painted Albert Einstein from life, he elected to stay in America. In time he settled in Columbia County, New York, where he continued to paint, show and innovate until his death in 1989, a few months after being honored with a major retrospective at the Kunst Museum in his home city of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
An image of the famous completed sitting portrait by Hansegger is shown below.
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