Alfred Gerstenbrand

Alfred Gerstenbrand was an Austrian painter, graphic artist, illustrator, writer and cartoonist, sometimes under the pseudonym F. Redl. He studied in Vienna, pursuing a career as a fiscal officer to secure his livelihood, but he also made a career as an artist, and became a professor in 1935. Beginning in 1929 he traveled several times to the USA. He was a member, and for five years vice-president, of the Vienna Secession, as well as a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus.

During World War II Gerstenbrand worked as an official curator and portraitist of high-ranking officers of the German Wehrmacht, but also sought contact with the Austrian resistance movement. At times, he was one of the so-called “tavern painters” who painted the walls against free consumption. After the war he lived at Lake Wolfgang and worked again mainly as a caricaturist and illustrator, but also as an author. The caricatures of tennis players submitted by Gerstenbrand in 1936 are taken from the book “Tennis einmal anders!” (“Tennis with a Difference”), published in Wien (Vienna) in 1937 with verses by Herman Rademacher.