Sexy Weimar (Part I)

Anom., Gay party in the "Eldorado", Berlin, 1926. The leftmost lady is the only woman in this picture.

 Anom., A Woman hiding Cocain, Berlin, 1925

 Atelier Manassé, Dangerous Passion, 1930s. Based on the married couple Olga Spolarics and Adorjan Wlássics, Atelier Manassé was active in Vienna between 1922 – 1938. 

Carlo Mense, In the Separée, c. 1930

 Rudolf Schlichter, Tingel-Tangel, 1919

 Walter Jacob, Self-Portrait as Transvestite, c. 1920

 F. W. Köbner, Mondaine und Demimondaine Skizzen, 1921

 Otto Dix, The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925

 Sebastian Droste (Husband of Anita Berber), 1923

 Tauentzien Street Team, Berlin, 1920s

 Anom., Berlin, 1920s

Go here to Part II

Mario Sironi

  Mario Sironi, Il camion giallo, 1918

Mario Sironi (1885-1961) was born in Sassari on the island of Sardinia, but spent his childhood in Rome. He embarked on the study of engineering at the University of Rome but quit after a nervous breakdown in 1903, one of many severe depressions that would recur throughout his life. Thereafter he dedicated himself to painting, and attended the Scuola Libera del Nudo, where he met Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni. These artists, who would later become the leading Futurists, were then painting in a Neo-Impressionist style. Sironi's development closely tracked theirs, and he adopted the Futurist style by 1913.

 Mario Sironi, La Lampada, 1919

After service in World War I, Sironi's version of Futurism gave way to an art of massive, immobile forms. In paintings such as La Lampada of 1919 (above), mannequins substitute for figures, as in the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. Like many artists in the period following the war, Sironi looked to the art of the past for inspiration, and works such as Solitudine (Solitude) of 1926 (below) with their contained, geometric forms, bear some kinship to the neoclassicism evident in works produced at the same time by Picasso. 

  Mario Sironi, Solitude, 1926

In 1922, together with Ubaldo Oppi, Achille Funi and others, Sironi founded the artist group Novecento Italiano. Toward the end of the 1920s, Sironi's style became more painterly. Through all of his stylistic developments, Sironi's was always a somber and dramatic vision, characterized by blocky forms, stark oppositions of light and shadow, and a generally pessimistic air.

Mario Sironi, Urban Landscape, 1923

A supporter of Mussolini, he contributed a large number of cartoons - over 1700 in all - to Il Popolo d'Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popola d'Italia, the Fascist newspapers. Rejecting the art market and the concept of the easel painting, he became committed to the ideal of a fusion of decoration and architecture, as exemplified by Gothic cathedrals. He felt that the mural was the proper basis of a popular national art. 

 Mario Sironi, Italy Between the Arts and Sciences, 1935

The state commissioned from him several large-scale decorative works in the 1930s, such as the mural L'Italia fra le arti e le scienze (Italy Between the Arts and Sciences) of 1935, (above) and he also contributed to the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in 1932. Although his esthetic of brutal monumentality represented the dominant style of Italian Fascism, his work was attacked by right-wing critics for its lack of overt ideological content. 

Mario Sironi, The Motorcyclist, 1920s

As an artist closely identified with Fascism, his reputation declined dramatically in the post-World War II period. Embittered by the course of events, he also suffered the loss of his daughter Rossana by suicide in 1948. He had returned to easel painting in 1943, and worked now in relative isolation. The paintings of his later years sometimes approach abstraction, resembling assemblages of archaeological fragments, or juxtaposed sketches. He continued working until shortly before his death in 1961 in Milan.

 Mario Sironi,  Composizione con treno e figura, c. 1930

You can see more works of Sironi here in my Flickr set.

Ubaldo Oppi

He must have sensed the knives of pain in his own body to operate with them successfully. (Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart, 1929)

 Ubaldo Oppi, La giovane sposa, 1922

Ubaldo Oppi (1889-1942) was born in Bologna as the son of a merchant and spent his youth in Vicenza. He was largely self-taught as a painter staying in Germany and Austria between 1907 and 1909. In Vienna, he attended the lessons of Gustav Klimt and, at the same time, studied anatomy. After spending a year in Italy in 1911 he moved to Paris, where he sought to combine his experience of Secessionism with expressive elements and vibrant colors. Later, Oppi studied the Italian painting of the Tre-and Quattrocento as well as Picasso's blue period. Talking about Picasso: His lover at that time, Fernande Olivier, left Picasso during a stormy love affair with Oppi.

Ubaldo Oppi, Donna alla finestra, 1921

Towards the end of the World War I Oppi spent some time in Austrian captivity where he produced a series of drawings anticipating many design elements of the New Objectivity. After another stay in Paris (1919-1922), he settled in Milan where, in 1922, he founded together with Achille Funi, Mario Sironi and others the artist group Novecento Italiano. Although he immediately distanced himself ideologically, he used the group's organization until the late twenties to show his works not only in Italy but also abroad to a larger audience.

 

Ubaldo Oppi, Artist and Model (Self-Portrait), 1920

Portraits played an important role in Oppi's art. A hard linearity and almost frozen colors predominate. The cool and distanced portrait artist and his wife, both of 1920 gives the impression of a lack of communication. While Oppi is shown as a painter, his wife holds the score of a Mozart sonata in her hand, allegorically showing the union of the two arts.

 Ubaldo Oppi, The Three Surgeons, 1926

One of Oppi's most significant paintings, The Three Surgeons of 1926, displays a group of doctors with cold technical precision and accuracy. It might well be that this painting was inspired by Max Oppenheimer's Operation (produced during Oppi's stay in Vienna) and that it in turn influenced Christian Schad's famous 1929 operation painting (Schad stayed in Italy between 1920 and 1927 where he developped his style studying the Novecento Italiano artists).

Christian Schad, Operation, 1929

In Oppi's later years religious motives became increasingly important. 1928 and 1930-32 he produced large-scale wall paintings with Christian themes. Ubaldo Oppi died on 25.10.1942 in Vicenza.

 Ubaldo Oppi, The Surgeon, 1913

You can see more works of Ubaldo Oppi here in my Flickr set.

Jacob Steinhardt

 Jacob Steinhardt, The City, 1913

Jacob Steinhardt (1887 –1968) was a painter and woodcut artist, who worked mainly in woodcuts depicting biblical and other Jewish subjects. He was born in the Silesian town Zerkow (now Poland). Steinhardt studied at the University of Art in Berlin in 1906, then took painting lessons with Lovis Corinth and, together with fellow student Ludwig Meidner, learned engraving with Hermann Struck in 1907.

 Jacob Steinhardt, Workers Uprising - Red Flag, c. 1920

From 1908 to 1910 Steinhardt lived in Paris, where he associated with Henri Matisse and Théophile Steinlen, and in 1911 he was in Italy. When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the German army, and served on the Eastern Front in Poland and Lithuania, and then in Macedonia. After the war, he returned to Berlin where he participated in the artist group New Sezession and joined forces with Ludwig Meidner and Richard Janthur to found "Die Pathetiker" (The pathetic ones), a group that showed their works at Herwarth Walden's gallery. 

Jakob Steinhardt, Sabbath in the village, 1923

 When the Nazis came into power in 1933, Steinhardt emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, and opened an art school in Jerusalem in 1934. In 1948 he closed the art school and became Chairman of the Graphics Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. From 1954-57 he was the Director of that school. Steinhardt died 1968 and was buried in Nahariya.

 Jacob Steinhardt, Deportation, 1946

You can view more works by Jacob Steinhardt here in my Flickr set.

Christian Schad

 Christian Schad, Self-Portrait, 1930s

Christian Schad (1894-1982) was born in Miesbach, Bavaria as the son of a wealthy lawyer family. He studied at the Art Academy in Munich in 1913, but quit after a couple of months because he rejected any examinations. A pacifist, he fled to Switzerland in 1915 to avoid service in World War I, settling first in Zurich and then in Geneva. Both cities were centers of the Dada movement, and Schad became a Dadaist and witnessed the foundation of the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. 

Christian Schad, Imperial Countess Triangi-Taglioni, 1926

In this period he developed a close friendship with the writer and dadaist Walter Serner. Beginning in 1918, Schad created his own version of the Photogram (which later was named "Schadographs" by Tristan Tzara) where a contour picture is developed on light-sensitive platters. Schad's descriptions of his techniques were eventually used by both Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in their more extensive explorations.

 Christian Schad, Amourette, 1918 (Schadography)

Schad's paintings of 1915–1916 show the influence of Cubism and Futurism. Schad's most famous oil painting of that period, Kreuzabnahme (Cross-Decrease), was painted in grayish tones with Walter Serner as the model:

 Christian Schad, Kreuzabnahme, 1916

From 1920 to 1925, Schad spent some years in Rome and Naples, where he studied the Italian painters and was influenced by the new Italian Realism, notably by Ubaldo Oppi, Felice Casorati and the artistic group Novecento Italiano. In 1921 he started to paint in a sober, realistic style later referred to as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), displaying  his interest in the relationship of the individual to society and conveying a sense of isolation and alienation. Schad married a lady from Rome, Marcella Arcangeli,  in 1923.  A wondeful portrait of Marcella was painted three years later:

 Christian Schad, Marcella, 1926

In 1927 the family emigrated to Vienna where Christian and Marcella separated (she died 1931 in a bathing accident). Schad went to Berlin in 1928 and settled there, now painting some of the most significant works of the New Objectivity. He led a dandyesque life visiting salons, dance and night bars. He was involved with some drawings in a "Guide to the vicious Berlin". His figures and motifs reflect the "golden" glamorous side of the Twenties.

Christian Schad, Self-Portrait with Model,1927

Also in 1927 Christian Schad painted his above "Self-Portrait with Model", which today has become the best known and most reproduced work of the artist and the New Objectivity. As the "painter with a scalpel," he dissects himself and his lover with cool objectivity. His eyes are wary, the atmosphere of the picture is cool, almost icy. The people depicted have nothing to say. Schad reported later that the woman's face was that of a stranger he saw as a customer in a stationery shop. The "sfregio", the facial scar, is a kind of "proof of love": the women in Naples wore these scars with pride to show that they had a jealous husband or lover.

 Christian Schad, Loving Boys, 1929

After the Nazis had seized power in 1933, Schad's art was not condemned in the way that the work of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and many other artists of the New Objectivity movement was, and in 1934 he was even able to submit some works to the" Great German Art Exhibition". This may have been because of his lack of commercial success and because the paintings of that time no longer possessed the cool sharpness of his earlier work. Also, Schad withdrew into a sort of "internal exile", reducing his painting to a only a few works. 

Christian Schad, Dr. Haustein, 1928. Dr. Haustein was a dermatologist with a specialist interest in syphilis who serviced the prostitutes on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. In the late 1920s his home became a fashionable salon where many of the distinguished artistic and literary figures of the time would meet. Schad described the unique atmosphere there as being one of "extreme intellectual and erotic freedom where writers, artists, and politicians would mingle with a plethora of scientists, physicians and beautiful women:"

In 1935 Schad took over the management of a brewery operation (the family fortune had vanished in the 1929 stock market crash) and developped an intense interest in  East Asian mysticism. In 1936 the Museum of Modern Art in New York displayed some of his  early Schadography - without his knowledge. In search of a model Schad met the young actress Bettina Mittelstadt whom he portrayed in 1942. She became his second wife in 1947.

 Christian Schad, Bettina, 1942

After the destruction of his Berlin studio during a 1943 bombing raid Schad moved to Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. The city commissioned him to copy Grünewald's Virgin, a project on which he worked until 1947. Schad continued to paint in the 1950s in a softened, almost kitschy style. He died in Stuttgart on February 25, 1982.

Ludwig Meidner

I'm thinking of the most exciting things, apocalyptic swarms, Hebrew prophets and mass grave hallucinations - because the spirit is all, and nature means nothing to me. (Ludwig Meidner)

Ludwig Meidner, I and the City (Self-Portrait), 1913

Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) was born in Bernstadt, Silesia. Following his parents' wishes the young Meidner began an apprenticeship as a mason, but broke it off. In 1903 he was admitted to the Breslau Academy for Fine Art, which he left after two years to move to Berlin. The instruction he took in etching from the artist Hermann Struck was important for his later career. In 1906 he went for about a year to Paris, where he met Amedeo Modigliani.

 Ludwig Meidner, The Suicide (Self-Portrait), 1912

The year 1912 was an important one for Meidner: he painted the first of his compelling self-portraits and Apocalyptic Landscapes. These works anticipate the horrors of the first world war by several years. The series, produced rapidly in a hectic heatwave, are some of the purest expressionist works, portraying the terror of the modern city in catastrophic settings; comets cross the sky like canon shells, fires rage, men scream and flee for their lives, buildings totter on the edge of collapse. 

 Ludwig Meidner, Apocalyptic Landscape, 1912

The years that followed in Berlin saw Meidner haunted by dire financial straits although he intensively experienced expressionist bohemian life. His portraits from 1915 to the end of the 1920s are a gallery of the leading expressionist and Dada writers and poets. Ludwig Meidner also was a habitual self-portraitist producing a remarkable series of self-portraits that provide a vivid illustration to his passing years. 

 Ludwig Meidner, Portrait of the Writer Johannes R. Becher, 1916

Meidner joined forces with Jacob Steinhardt and Richard Janthur to found "Die Pathetiker" (The pathetic ones), a group that showed their works at Herwarth Walden's gallery. There he met Robert Delaunay, whose Cubism, with Italian Futurism, inspired his style. In 1915, he portraied his friend Conrad Felixmüller who occasionally worked in Meidner's Berlin studio.

 Ludwig Meidner, Portrait of Conrad Felixmüller, 1915

Conscripted into the military in 1916, Meidner served as an interpreter and censor at an internment camp for prisoners of war. There he began to write. After the war, in 1918,  he joined the Novembergruppe (November Group) and the revolutionary Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst (Cooperative for Proletarian Art). Meidner, at that time, had a combination of Jewish Messianism and a somewhat mystical Marxism that sometimes anticipated Walter Benjamin’s later synthesis. He was an evangelical adherent of the Arbeitsrat, writing "we artists and poets should be in the forefront of  the struggle. Socialism should be our new faith." 

Ludwig Meidner, Revolution, 1913

Disappointed at the failure of the Revolution, Meidner  retired to nurse his disillusionment in private, abandoning Expressionism, which by then was so popular that its commercial outlook increasingly brightened. In Autobiographische Plauderei (Autobiographical Chat) he offended companions and friends by repudiating his early work. Religious themes, landscapes, still lifes and more portraits would thenceforth be his dominant genres.

 Else Meidner, Self-Portrait, 1926

In 1927 Ludwig Meidner married Else, née Meyer, who was also an artist. As early as 1932, Meidner expressed his fears concerning growing anti-Semitism in a letter to his fellow painter, John Uhl: “We live in a highly-nationalistic area, are practically the only Jewish family in the neighbourhood and known as such, and might get into very dangerous situations.” After the Nazis came to power, Ludwig and Else Meidner's artistic possibilities became increasingly limited. Exhibitions were now only possible in Jewish cultural institutions such as the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Culture Association). 

 Ludwig Meidner, Self-Portrait, 1935

In order to escape the growing anti-Semitism in Berlin, Ludwig Meidner and his family moved to Cologne in 1935, where he had been offered a position as drawing teacher at the Jewish school Yavneh. After several other plans to emigrate had come to naught, the couple immigrated to England in August 1939, shortly before the war broke out. In England, the Meidners lived in abject poverty. After the war began, Ludwig Meidner was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man. Many other German  intellectuals were imprisoned in the camp, and Ludwig Meidner considered his situation bearable because now at least his physical survival was ensured. Else Meidner, on the other hand, was forced to take on a position as a servant in order to make a living. 

 Ludwig Meidner, Crowd, c. 1915

Despite a certain degree of success – as, for example, when the Ben Uri Gallery put on a double show of the Meidners' work in 1949 – Ludwig Meidner lacked any prospects for artistic success in London. Even after ten years of living in exile, he had not managed to become established within the English art scene. Practically the only ones to take any notice of his art were other German-Jewish immigrants. He was invited to visit Germany in 1952, and the warm reception by old friends there as well as the outlook for success as an artist led him to return there for good in 1953. In a last, very productive, creative phase he further developed the style of painterly realism he had developed in the 1920s. In 1963 he had his first major exhibitions since 1918 in Recklinghausen and Berlin. Ludwig Meidner died on 14th May 1966 in Darmstadt, aged 82.

 Ludwig Meidner, My Night Visage, 1913

The Ludwig Meidner Archive at the Jewish Museum in Francfort contains many works from the estate of Ludwig Meidner. It comprises oil paint­ings, works on paper, sketchbooks, drawings, prints and works by fellow artists. The archive also holds the copyright to Meidner's oeuvre. Moreover, works from the estates of Else Meidner, Kurt Levy and Arie Goral are also theld here. The archive collects work by Jewish and exiled artists from the period 1933–45. You can see mor works of Ludwig Meidner here in my Flickr set.

Richard Müller

Richard Müller, Archer IV, 1920

Richard Müller (1874-1954) was born in the Bohemian city of Tschirnitz (today Cernovice nad Ohra, Czech Republic) as the son of a weaver. His artistic talent was evident early on. In 1888, at the age of only 14, he was animated by a porcelain painter to enter the famous School of the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufactory in Meissen, where he was immediately accepted. In 1890, Müller went on his own and without any financial support to Dresden. Here he was, although he had not yet reached the required age of entry, accepted at the Art Academy as one of the youngest students ever. In 1895 he met the graphic artist and sculptor Max Klinger, who inspired him to begin with etching.

Richard Müller, Self-Portrait, 1920

In 1900, now in Dresden as well known as Klinger, Müller was appointed professor at the Academy His students included George Grosz and Otto Dix. In 1933, shortly after Hitler had seized power, he became president of the Dresden Academy and, in such capacity, confirmed the dismissal of his former student Otto Dix from his professorship. But also Müller lost his professorship two years later because of "subversive tendencies in his art".

Richard Müller, Death as Arsonist, 1916

Nevertheless, Müller remained in high esteem as a painter under the Nazi régime. He exhibited several times at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich's Haus der Deutschen Kunst, in 1939 with a pencil drawing of Hitler's birthplace. In the final phase of the Second World War, he was included in the Gottbegnadeten Liste of the most important artists, saving him from any war effort, even on the home front. Müller died in 1954 at the age of 80 in Dresden.

 

Richard Müller, Boy with Snake, 1912

Richard Müller, Meditation, 1900

Richard Müller, Archer II, 1918

Richard Müller, Message of Love, 1921