Carl KAUBA
1865–1922, Austria/USA

The son of an Austrian shoemaker, Carl Kauba was born on August 13, 1865. He began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with professor Laufenberg, Carl Waschmann and Stefan Schwartz and in 1886 he spent 2 years in Paris.
His western polychrome bronze subjects are highly sought after.
He is also noted for his "Naughties"- a collection of mechanical push button sculptures.
Kauba also worked under the name of T.Curts, and Karl Thenn, possibly for copyright reasons in Vienna, as he worked for more than one foundry.

Collectors now rank him in a class with Remington and Russell as one of the great portrayers of American Western. His subjects were typically American Indians, cavalrymen, cowboys, and roughriders. His work has been fully appreciated on both sides of the Atlantic. Carl studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under professor Laufenberg. Later he would study at the academies under Carl Waschmann and Stefan Schwartz and in Paris in 1886 to further study. Kauba's fascination with the West was fed by the stories of the German writer, Carl May, whose tales of Western adventures were known throughout Europe. It has been suggested that Kauba traveled to the American West when he was about twenty-five years old, possibly returning to Austria with voluminous notes, sketches, and several models of Western sculpture. However the majority of scholars feel that the artist actually never traveled to the United States at all, but instead relied upon the accounts of others and first hand artifacts to execute his bronzes.

Source: www.aspireauctions.com