Hans Richard Preiss was a Soviet spy and an artist. He was born in Konigsberg; in the 1930’s he, together with his wife, communist Gertrude Gennis, traveled to Europe and worked undercover. The special service agent worked in regions with an unstable political atmosphere: in Austria, Spain, and Finland. And at the same time, Jurgis Preiss wrote travel notes about the cities he visited and made fluent sketches, inspired by his encounters with the European culture.
Jurgen’s espionage in Europe for the USSR brought him a generous offer from the government: Soviet citizenship, apartment and a workshop in Moscow. Thus, Hans Richard turned into Jurgis Ionasovich, and changed his nationality from German into Lithuanian. So said Comrade Preiss’s fresh passport.
For his picture Man with a Newspaper, the author for once used canvas and oil paints. The artist portrayed a family friend and his first wife. In the foreground, Sven Gronwall is depicted wearing a blue suit and holding a newspaper in his hands. In the background, there is Gertrude Gennis in a red dress, bent over the table. Jurgis Preiss worked quickly and painted from nature, so the shapes on the canvas are simplified, and the proportions and perspectives are distorted. Rough strokes and contrast of shades set an effect of incompleteness: in this way the artist drew the viewer’s attention to the most significant details of the composition. Preiss often depicted family and friends in a relaxed atmosphere. Portraits demonstrated the calmness of everyday life through the impression of the moment rather than through the story of the event. The author used to say that he was not a big fan of the story in painting.
This approach bonds My Friend Sven and Genya and other works of the same period with the ‘New Traditionalism’ movement, which became a fashion on the continent in the 1920’s to 1930’s.
Currently, a significant part of the paintings belongs to the Kaliningrad State Art Gallery and the Kemerovo Regional Museum of Fine Arts. However, many paintings are held in the private collection of Lyudmila Biryukova, Jurgis Preiss’s adopted daughter from his third marriage with Lyubov Biryukova.
