Artists

Alfred Krenz was born in Vienna, Austria in 1899. Between 1916 and 1926, he received a formal arts education at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 1926, he received the Prix de Rome and from 1929 to 1931 he studied in Paris under French Cubist painter, Amédéé Ozenfant. While Krenz participated in an exhibition in Cape Town in the late 1930s, he only came to the country in 1949 – via many years in the Netherlands. He settled in Cape Town, where he opened an art school. Krenz travelled and exhibited widely in Europe and South Africa – including the 1954 Venice Biennale and 1961 Sao Paulo Biennale. He received an honorary professorship from the Austrian government in 1958 and a medal of honour for painting from the South African Academy in 1967. The Pretoria Art Museum held retrospective exhibition of his works in 1975.