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Hans Zatzka PAINTINGS

Hans Zatzka 1859 - 1945 Vienna, Austria

Hans Zatzka Signature

Hans Zatzka, also known as P. Ronsard,Zabateri, Pierre de Ronsard, Joseph Bernard and Bernárd Zatzka, was born March 8, 1859 in Vienna, to a builder and his Viennese actress wife, Hilde Sochor.

Zatzka showed an early interest in painting. From 1877 to 1882 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, studying under Christian Griepenkerl, Karl Wurzinger, and Carl of Blaas. In 1880, at the age of 20, he was awarded the Golden Fügermedal; the golden decoration for services to the city Vienna.

After several trips to Italy, Hans worked in the style of his predecessor, Hans Makart, as a free-lance painter in Vienna, painting ceiling frescoes in stairway houses and residential buildings, numerous murals for altars in churches, and portraits. It was during this time that he developed as special interest in academic genre paintings of idyllic women and cupids.

From these representations, Zatzka turned to painting guardian angel images, elves, sensuous female figures, genre scenes, allegories and other popular motifs. He was a greatly influenced by the operas of Richard Wagner and considered ground-breaking in the production of "bedroom pictures" or "towel format", a term used to describe a format that fit the low ceiling and cramped spaces. By the 1920's this style was the size of choice for most European homes.

By the turn of the century, Zatzkas' pictures turned to picture postcard sales in the galleries of Viennese artists, and ultimately sold to other publishers. In 1906, Zatzka gave precise orders for mass production on a trial basis. By 1914, the first of Hans Zatzkas' bedroom images were distributed.

Hans Zatzka did not make his living from postcards but from his religious frescoes in churches, altar paintings, and other large commissions such as hospitals in Vienna during the 1920's. He lived in his home studio, never took in students or teaching jobs and painted until the 80th year of his life.

Hans Zatzka died December 17, 1945.

By 1980, demand for Hans Zatzka paintings in the United States enjoyed great popularity and significantly increased the value of his work. Zatka's work is now sold internationally in galleries and auction houses, fetching large sums of money. In 2004, Somalia published special stamps with four motifs of images Zatzka: harem dancer, nymphs, spring goddess, and night sky.

Discovery could fix RNA defects

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Share on print Scientists have cracked a molecular code that may open the way to destroying or correcting defective gene products, such as those that cause human genetic disorders. The code determines the recognition of RNA molecules by a superfamily of RNA-binding proteins called pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins. When a gene is switched on, it is copied into RNA. This RNA is then used to make proteins that are required by the organism for all of its vital functions.  If a gene is defective, its RNA copy and proteins from this will also be defective. This forms the basis of many terrible genetic disorders in humans. RNA-binding PPR proteins could revolutionise the way we treat disease. Their secret is their versatility - they can find and bind a specific RNA molecule and can correct it if it is defective or destroy it if it is detrimental. They can also help ramp up production of proteins required for growth and development. The new paper in PLoS Genetics describes for the first time how PPR proteins recognise their RNA targets via an easy-to-understand code. This mechanism mimics the simplicity and predictability of the pairing between DNA strands described by Watson and Crick 60 years ago but at a protein/RNA interface. This exceptional breakthrough comes from an international, interdisciplinary research team, including UWA researchers Professor Ian Small and Aaron Yap from the ARC Centre for Excellence in Plant Energy Biology and Professor Charlie Bond and Yee Seng Chong from UWA's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, along with Professor Alice Barkan's team at the University of Oregon. This research was publicly funded by the ARC and the WA State Government in Australia and the NSF in the USA. "Many PPR proteins are vitally important, but we don't know what they do. Now we've cracked the code, we can find out," said ARC Plant Energy Biology Director Ian Small. "What's more, we can now design our own synthetic proteins to target any RNA sequence we choose - this should allow us to control the expression of genes in new ways that just weren't available before. The potential is really exciting." "This discovery was made in plants but is applicable across many species as PPR proteins are found in humans and animals too," says Professor Bond. The open access PLoS journal paper is available here. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.