Hanns Ludwig Katz

 Hanns Ludwig Katz and his first wife, c. 1930

Hanns Ludwig Katz (1892–1940) was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. After leaving school he made a short sojourn in Paris at the atelier of Henri Matisse. From 1913 to 1918 Katz studied painting, history of art, and architecture in Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, and Munich. He married the pianist Franziska Ehrenreich and they moved to Frankfurt in 1920, after he had published a series of expressionist lithographs entitled Danse macabre which alluded to the revolution in 1919. 

 Hanns Ludwig Katz, Self-Portrait, c. 1930

In Frankfurt, Katz became known as a painter of portraits, cityscapes, and still lifes, which revealed the influence of Max Beckmann and the Neue Sachlichkeit. But despite the success and the support of the art critic Max Osborn, he had to become a partner in a whitewashing company in 1923 in order to make a living. 

 

Hanns Ludwig Katz, Eye Operation, 1929

After the Nazi takeover in 1933, Katz took an active part in the Frankfurt section of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, (Jewish Cultural Association) and in 1935, one year after his wife died, he planned to establish a semiautonomous Jewish settlement in Yugoslavia. After his endeavors failed he immigrated to South Africa in 1936. Before leaving Frankfurt, Katz married Ruth Wolf, who followed him into exile. Thus he was able to escape before one of his best expressionist portraits - of the anarchist Gustav Landauer (1919) - was publicly denounced in the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1938. 

 Hanns Ludwig Katz, Miss Mary (Detail), 1926

Despite becoming deeply involved in painting the landscapes of his new homeland, Katz was unable to make headway in the South African art scene. Apart from a small circle of friends, mostly drawn from a similar German-Jewish leftist background, he was intellectually isolated. He earned a living as a house painter and his wife Ruth, a sculptor, supplemented their income by designing record covers.

 Hanns Ludwig Katz, Self-Portrait, c. 1930

In 1940, Hanns Ludwig Katz died of cancer in Johannesburg. It took a half-century for Katz’s work to resurface in Germany, a crucial link being Hans Wongtschowsky, a fellow refugee, who had come to Johannesburg a few months earlier than Katz and shared a house with him. Wongtschowsky sent slides of Katz’s paintings to a relative in Germany, which were brought to the attention of Henri Nannen, whose new foundation had endowed the new Kunsthalle in Emden. Nannen alerted the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, where a few charcoal drawings of Katz’s were housed, to his paintings. They began intensive research into the work and life of the forgotten artist which culminated in a major retrospective exhibition of his work in 1992, under the auspices of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt and the Kunsthalle in Emden. In 1994, the exhibition was brought to the South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

Lovis Corinth

 Lovis Corinth, Ecce Homo, 1925

Ja! Ich weiß, woher ich stamme!
Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme
Glühe und verzehr' ich mich.
Licht wird Alles, was ich fasse,
Kohle Alles, was ich lasse:
Flamme bin ich sicherlich.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1882)

Lovis Corinth was born in 1858 in the town of Tapiau in East Prussia (now Russia), the son of a tanner. Corinth grew up in a rural setting, with little or no exposure to works of art. From a very early age, however, he enjoyed sketching and painting. At the age of nine he was enrolled first in the public school in nearby Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) and then at the Königsberg Academy of Art.

 Lovis Corinth, Nana, 1911

Corinth continued his artistic training in Munich (1880-1882), and then in Antwerp and Paris (1884-1886), where he studied with Adolphe William Bouguereau. During this period Corinth remained uninfluenced by the "modern" painters of the day, such as Manet and Monet; he preferred instead the naturalistic style of Wilhelm Leibl, who had been a pupil of Gustave Courbet. He also admired works by Rubens in the Louvre in Paris and by Rembrandt.

 Lovis Corinth, Cain, 1917

Corinth returned to Germany in 1891 and continued his painting career. He became a part of the art world of Berlin at the turn of the century and in 1901 he opened a school for painters there. His first student, Charlotte Berend, became his wife two years later. Other students  of Corint were Magnus Zeller and Jacob Steinhardt.

 Lovis Corinth, Salome II 1899

In the first decade of the 20th century, Corinth's palette became brighter and he began to employ the freer brush-work characteristic of the German Impressionists, represented by Max Liebermann. In addition to his landscapes and figure compositions, he achieved great success as a portrait painter, and his services were much in demand. Corinth was elected chairman of the Berlin Secession, to which he had belonged since 1899, in 1911. In that same year he completed 61 oils, as well as many drawings, etchings, and lithographs, and all of his work was selling well. He was named president of the Berlin Secession in 1915, an artist association with prominent members like Max Beckmann, Lyonel Feininger and Max Slevogt.

Lovis Corinth, Portrait of Hermann Struck, 1915. In 1915, Struck was thirty-nine. A painter, engraver and art critic, he posed for his friend Corinth wearing the uniform of the officer he had become. Neither the subject nor the painter give in to the exalted belligerency of the moment. Despite the fact that Corinth paints with emphatic touches, he keeps his distance from all forms of expressionism, in order, to depict the worry, the melancholy and the unease of the artist in his soldier's uniform. After the war, Struck left Germany where life had become too distressing for him, and settled in Palestine.

At the end of 1911, Corinth suffered a massive stroke which threatened to end his career. His left side was paralyzed, but through great perserverance and determination he was able to resume painting the following year. From 1912 until his death in 1925 Corinth continued to work and to struggle against his increasing debility. He produced some 500 oils and about 1,000 prints, in addition to drawings and watercolors. He painted numerous self-portraits, and made a habit of painting one self every year on his birthday as a means of self-examination.

 Lovis Corinth, Self-portrait, 1896

In Corinth's late work expressive elements dominate, reflecting his own personal struggles against his illness and, perhaps, an increased perception of the world around him. He created numerous portraits and self-portraits, notable for their profound psychological insights, and his work influenced later generations of German artists. Corinth died in July 1925 while on a visit to Holland to see paintings by Rembrandt and Frans Hals. One of his most famous paintings, Ecce Homo, shown here at the beginning, was done earlier in the year. 

 Lovis Corinth, Samson Blinded, 1912

Lovis Corinth's work was condemned by the Nazis as "degenerate", and 295 of his works were removed from German museums (most of them were sold to Switzerland). The Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg denounced him as "Butcher of the brush, dissolved in the syrian mud of Berlin". Today, Corinth is seen as a major artist whose paintings combined elements from the Old Masters he admired, such as Rembrandt, with late 19th-century Impressionism to create, in his late work, a fully modern idiom. His paintings, drawings, and prints are included in numerous public and private collections throughout the world.

You can see many more of his paintings in high resolution at Zeno.

Heinrich Ehmsen

Heinrich Ehmsen, almost forgotten today,  was born in 1886 as the fifth child of a basket maker in Kiel. His childhood was determined by poverty and his parents' struggle to provide food. From the age of six, Heinrich had to contribute to the family's livelihood by weaving baskets in his father's workshop. From 1901 to 1906 Ehmsen trained under the Kiel master painter Ernst Rüschmann and painted his first landscape and animal studies. Ehmsen's interest in fine arts grew and he decided to train as a decorative painter, paying for his training by painting houses after work.

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad (Red Jacket), 1919

From 1906 to 1909 Heinrich Ehmsen attended the Düsseldorf  Kunstgewerbeschule, where he was taught by leading exponents of Jugendstil such as Peter Behrens and Jan Thorn-Prikker. In 1909 Ehmsen spent a year in Paris, where he was inspired for his future work. From 1911 until 1928 Ehmsen worked as a freelance artist in Munich, interrupted by World War I and several trips. After his move to Munich, the Blauer Reiter group of artists began to influence Ehmsen's creative work and his art became more critical of society. In 1913, two of his paintings were shown in Herwarth Walden's exhibition of the European Avantgarde, Erster Deutschen Herbstsalon .

During the 1920s Ehmsen developped increasingly into a fighter for the wretched in society and revolution became the central theme of many of his paintings. Reflections on the war and the failed German revolution, especially his experience of the bloody liquidation of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1918/19 led him to paint the works shown here. Like the revolution paintings shown yesterday in my article about the the Cooperative for Proletarian Art I found them in the inventories of the St. Peterburg Hermitage.

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad of the Sailor Egelhofer (central part of the triptych), 1931. The sailor Rudolf Egelhofer was one of the first members of the German Communist Party. Aged only 23, he became one of the leaders of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Together with Ernst Toller, he was commanding the "Red Army". After the defeat of the Soviet Republic by troops loyal to the central government in Berlin, Rudolf Egelhofer was tortured and shot on May 3rd, 1919.

In 1929, after a six months study sojourn to Southern France, Heinrich Ehmsen moved to Berlin. The following year he worked at the German academy in Rome for six months together with Schmidt-Rottluff and Georg Schrimpf and subsequently went to Southern Italy. In 1932, Ehmsen stayed one year in the Soviet Union; he exhibited in Moscow and several russian museums acquired his works.

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad of the Sailor Egelhofer (right-hand part of the triptych), 1931

In 1933, Ehmsen was held captive by the Gestapo for several months. He was denounced as a "degenerate" artist in 1937 and his pictures were removed from German collections. During World War II Ehmsen worked for the Wehrmacht as a cultural liaison officer in Paris. In 1941, he organized a trip to Germany for French artists (participants were, among others, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck).

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad of the Sailor Egelhofer (left-hand part of the triptych), 1931

After the war, in 1945, Heinrich Ehmsen was appointed head of the painting class at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in West Berlin which was directed, at that time, by Karl Hofer. On the grounds of  a solidarity note to the Congrès mondial des partisans pour la paix Ehmsen lost his job at the Hochschule in 1949. Ehmsen now preferred to take residence in the German Democratic Republic where, in 1950, he joined the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin. Heinrich Ehmsen died 1964 in East Berlin.

Franz Sedlacek

 Franz Sedlacek, Storm, 1932

Born 1891 in Breslau, Franz Sedlacek went to high school in Linz and eventually studied chemistry at the Technical University in Vienna. In 1913, he is one of the founding members of the artists group MAERZ (March), which was joined later by Alfred Kubin. His first graphic works were printed in magazines such as Die Muskete (The Musket) and Simplicissimus.

Franz Sedlacek, Winterlandschaft, 1925

After having served in the First World War, Franz Sedlacek moved to Vienna and became increasingly engaged in oil painting. He participated for the first time in an exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1920. His material existence was guaranteed by an employment as curator for the chemistry department at the Technical Museum in Vienna.

 Franz Sedlacek, Übungswiese (Training Ground), 1926

In 1923, Sedlacek married Maria Albrecht. The couple raised two daughters. The following year, he participated in the Austrian Art Exhibition 1900-1924 shown in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. Subsequently, Franz Sedlacek became one of the internationally best known Austrian artists of the interwar period. He took part in the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona, where he received the Gold Medal for painting - his first international award. One year later he was shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a presentation of contemporary Austrian art, and received the Austrian State Prize in 1937.

Franz Sedlacek, The Moon Calf, 1936

In the late twenties Sedlacek became a close friend of the painter Herbert Reyl-Hanisch (who portraied his wife Maria in 1930). Like Reyl-Hanisch's and Rudolf Wacker's work Franz Sedlacek's style oscillates between Magic Realism and New Objectivity. His themes are fantastic and surreal. Hybrids and caricatured figures predominate. The mood is often depressed and threatening as you can see in the following canvas, called Moulage Studio (Moulages are wax anatomical models of diseases and wounds):

Franz Sedlacek, Beim Moulagenmacher (Moulage Studio), 1932

Drafted by the German Wehrmacht in 1939, Sedlacek was sent to Norway, Stalingrad and Poland, where he was listed as missing in 1945. Only in 1972, Franz Sedlacek was declared legally dead. After the war, Sedlacek's oeuvre was almost forgotten, and only since the 1990s he was exhibited again. A collection of his works is on permanent exhibition at the Leopold Museum in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, including his 1931 bat painting Song in the Twilight:

Franz Sedlacek, Song in the Twilight, 1931

I have collected more of Franz Sedlacek's works in a Flickr set which you can see here.

Murderer, The Hope of Women

 Oskar Kokoschka, Murderer, The Hope of Women, 1909

How can a murderer be the hope of women - or of men, for that matter? And what have hope and murder of women to do with art? In his memoir Oskar Kokoschka, who was known more for his visual art than for his theatrical experiments, tells us that "art gives renewed hope as often as the world fails"; and insists that the answer is not in words per se but in the experience of the performance. 

 Oskar Kokoschka, Poster for "Murderer, the Hope of Women" (Vienna Summer Theatre), 1909

Originally staged in Vienna in 1909, Murderer, The Hope of Women is generally regarded as the first Expressionist play. Its obsession with sex and death is expressed in grand gestures and archaic language, while its physical risks, and its chants and screams, so vividly presaged the theories and plays of Antonin Artaud that it could almost be called a paradigm of the Theatre of Cruelty. 

 Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Der Lustmörder (The Ripper), 1917

When Kokoschka’s play was performed, it was met with considerable criticism and controversy. Its extreme visual aspects, with its dramatic and disturbing costumes and violent imagery, made it the first expressionist drama for many critics. The playwright Paul Kornfeld praised the revolutionary drama as a breakthrough art form, calling it a “verbally supported pantomime”. Similarly, drama critic Walter Sokel admired the work’s departure from traditional realism and its exploration into the surrealism underlying its biblical and mythical allusions. 

 George Grosz, John, the Lady Killer, 1918

Many interpreted the play as an effective theatrical portrayal of Otto Weininger’s idea of gender relations as a battle between man and woman. According to Weininger, Sexuality was a conflict between superior male spirituality and debased female bestiality. Otto Weininger was widely read at that time, and it might well be that he also had some influence on this early Otto Müller painting:

 Otto Müller, Standing Nude with Dagger, 1903

By the way, there is a nice song by Momus with the same title. Don't miss it.

The Cooperative for Proletarian Art

 Ludwig Meidner, Brass the Communist, 1920

The Cooperative for Proletarian Art (Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst), founded in Berlin in 1920 by Friedrich Wilhelm Brass (above), combined the goals of a business venture with an organization of strictly social and political character. Among the members of the Genossenschaft were the already well-known masters of German Expressionism: Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Otto Mueller (see them here) as well as the artists of the new generation whose artistic career started after the end of the First World War. Among them were George Grosz, Ludwig Meidner, Karl Holtz (below), Erich Godal (below), Conrad Felixmüller, Walter Jacob, Walter Gramatté, Franz Seiwert, Arnold Schmidt-Niechiol (below) and others. 

 Karl Holtz, Unemployed, c. 1920

The Genossenschaft presented the newest trends of modern German art from Jugendstil  (Siegfriend Behrend) and expressionist artists from the group Die Brücke (Schmidt-Rottluff, Heckel) to Dadaism (George Grosz). Despite different artistic views all those artists were united for a short time by the idea of "proletarian" art.

 Erich Godal, Rebellion, 1920

The founder of The Cooperative for Proletarian Art was Friedrich Wilhelm Brass. He was born in the Rhineside province of Prussia in the town of Krefeld in 1873. Brass’s undertaking in Berlin in 1920 was supposed to combine commerce and politics, apparently he hoped that in a situation of revolutionary uprising the new art would be demanded by the general working public. Brass was going to deal in mostly inexpensive printed graphic arts, considerable part of which had political and propagandistic character. However, the lack of substantial financial means had great effect on Brass’s plans. The Cooperative didn’t have its own exhibition premises. Brass managed to publish just the lithograph series Revolution by Erich Godal (above) and portraits of Karl Liebknecht made by Arnold Schmidt-Niechciol:

 Arnold Schmidt-Niechciol, Portrait of Karl Liebknecht, 1920

The Collection of The Cooperative for Proletarian Art  was brought to Russia in November 1920, when a Russian delegation returned to Petrograd from Germany. That delegation was headed by Grigory Zinoviev, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, who attended the Congress of the German Independent Social Democratic Party. It was the first international trip by any Soviet leader after the Revolution. Zinoviev was accompanied by Ilya Ionovich Ionov (1887-1942), a professional revoluationary who had spent many years in prison and exile. Ionov took great interest in art and literature and was writing poems. Ionov, who had access to Comintern’s money, bought all that Brass had as the property of The Cooperative. This is how the collection ended in Russia. Today, most of the collection is kept in the St. Petersburg Hermitage.

Erich Godal, Dance of Death, 1920

The Cooperative for Proletarian Art of Friedrich Brass was largely forgotten in Germany. During the fight against "degenerative" art the Nazi destroyed most of the Expressionists’ works that were stored in the museums of Germany. The history was also cruel towards the young artists who were cooperating with the Genossenschaft. Their biographies and the destinies of their works were closely intertwined with the devastating events of fascist terror in the field of art and war. They were prohibited, persecuted, their works were mercilessly destroyed by fires and bombings. That is why the value of the Genossenschaft’s Collection, preserved in Russia, is so high. It presents a unique image of the full and diverse artistic life in Berlin in 1920.

Kokoschka's War Paintings

Oskar Kokoschka, Anschluß-Alicia in Wonderland, 1942

Deemed a degenerate by the Nazis, Kokoschka fled Austria in 1934 for Prague. In 1938, when the Czechs began to mobilize for the expected invasion of the Wehrmacht, he fled to the United Kingdom and remained there during the war. The above painting is a harsh satire against the British appeasement policy (Treaty of Munich) which facilitated Hitler's annexion (Anschluß) of Czechoslovakia.

Oskar Kokoschka, Marianne-Maquis, 1942

1942 was a year of deadlock during the Second World War. Whilst the Soviet Union was battling the Nazis in the East, there were repeated calls for British and American governments to launch a Second Front in Western Europe. In Marianne-Maquis, Kokoschka vents his criticism of the allies’ delay by showing British war leaders Winston Churchill and General Montgomery drinking tea in the Café de Paris in Soho. The central figure is Marianne, the traditional personification of France, now linked to the Maquis, the French Resistance.

Oskar Kokoschka, Loreley, 1941

The title Loreley refers to Heinrich Heine's famous poem about a mythical Rhine maiden, who lured sailors to their death. Kokoschka explained that his painting mocks British claims to maritime supremacy:

Britannia no longer rules the waves; inaction has lasted too long; an octopus swims away with a trident, the emblem of marine power. Queen Victoria, who built up the British fleet into a dominant position, rides a shark and stuffs white, brown and black sailors into its mouth. Only the frog on her hand refuses to accept the same fate: it represents Ireland, where there are no reptiles except frogs.

It is interesting to compare Kokoschka's Loreley to another shipwreck piece which - painted by Max Beckmann almost thirty years earlier - can be seen as a vision of the approaching First World War:

Max Beckmann, Sinking of the Titanic, 1912