(b Stribach bei Lienz, East Tyrol, 29 Jan 1868; d St Justina bei Bozen, South Tyrol [now Santa Giustina, Italy], 4 Nov 1926). Austrian painter. He was the illegitimate son of a peasant girl, Maria Trojer, and the Austrian church artist and photographer Georg Egger (1835-1907). Later he adopted the name of his father and home town. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste in Munich from 1884 to 1893. The main subject-matter of his early works, which were painted in a naturalistic style and influenced by Franz von Defregger, was determined by his background: scenes from peasant life and from the Tyrolean freedom battles of 1809 against the French troops of Napoleon, for example Ave Maria after the Battle on the Bergisel (1893-6; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.). He moved in 1899 to Vienna, where his own style developed: its fresco-like monumentality, as in The Dance of Death of Year Nine (1908; Vienna, Belvedere), was a contrast to sophisticated metropolitan culture at the turn of the century. His style was characterized by a concentration on the clearly outlined large form and by a linear rhythm in the picture surface. Bulky figures combine to form voluminous masses that appear against the background as silhouettes. Colours are reduced to mainly monochrome earth-coloured tones of brown.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
