Christian Schad

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Photo portrait of Christian Schad by Franz Grainer

Christian Schad (born August 21, 1894 in Miesbach , Upper Bavaria , † February 25, 1982 in Stuttgart ) was a German painter of the New Objectivity . Along with Otto Dix , George Grosz , Rudolf Schlichter , Karl Hubbuch and Richard Ziegler , he is counted among the most important representatives of verism . His estate is kept by the Christian Schad Foundation in Aschaffenburg.

life and work

Childhood and adolescence

Christian Schad was the son of the privy councilor Carl Schad and his wife Marie, née Fohr. On his mother's side, he was a great-grandnephew of the painters Daniel Fohr and Carl Philipp Fohr . Shortly after his birth, the family moved back to Munich . Together with his sister, he grew up in sheltered, cultivated circumstances; the parents supported the children's musical inclinations from an early age. Through the father there were close ties to the Bavarian royal family. At the age of 18 Schad left high school and enrolled at the art academy in Munich. He studied with Heinrich von Zügel and Carl Johann Becker-Gundahl , but dropped out after a few semesters because he “didn't want to be examined”. He rented a studio in the artists' quarter Schwabing , where the first expressionist woodcuts were made. Not far from his studio, important contemporary art exhibitions took place, and with the editorial group Der Blaue Reiter , an important pioneer of modernism emerged in Munich. In 1914 Christian Schad traveled to Volendam in the Netherlands to study .

Dada in Switzerland

After the outbreak of World War I, he simulated a heart defect in order to avoid being drafted into the infantry, and in 1915 fled to Zurich in neutral Switzerland . There he witnessed the emergence of the Dada movement around Hans Arp , Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings . He attended their events at Cabaret Voltaire . He had a close friendship with the poet Walter Serner ; Schad supported Serner in founding the monthly magazine Sirius and various Dada campaigns. He published woodcuts in avant-garde magazines and a graphic portfolio. At the end of 1916 he moved to Geneva , made painting studies in the “lunatic asylum” there and began his actual Dada phase. In 1919 material experiments led to the later named after him photograms ( Schadographien ), contour images generated on light-sensitive plates, similar to the rayographies by Man Ray . In addition, he worked on wood reliefs, oil paintings with a Cubist character and other woodcuts.

New Objectivity

After a short stay in Munich , Schad spent several years in Rome from 1920 and, together with Serner, in Naples , which was more interesting for him because it was “poorer in culture” . It was there that the first realistic portraits were created. In 1923 he married the Roman Marcella Arcangeli, and the following year their son Nikolaus was born. With the consent of the Vatican, Schad painted a portrait of Pope Pius XI in the winter of 1924 . In 1925 the family moved to Vienna , where they quickly found their way into social life. Schad took part in the exhibition Die Neue Sachlichkeit near Neumann-Nierendorf in Berlin . He designed the cover drawings for a seven-volume edition of Serner's works.

After separating from his wife, Schad went to Berlin in 1928, from where he made trips to Paris and Sweden. Numerous contacts from his time in Switzerland made it easier for him to move. Schad led a life as a dandy and moved not only in the art scene, but also in salons , dance bars and nightspots. With a few drawings he contributed to the guide through “vicious” Berlin , written by Curt Moreck , a description of Berlin nightlife around 1930. Schads figures and motifs reflect the sophisticated side of the “golden” twenties . In 1931 his wife Marcella drowned while bathing in the sea, their son Nikolaus came to live with his grandparents.

The 30 or so portraits from the period between 1925 and 1930 are included in the New Objectivity : Lotte and Sonja , who are examples of the new, self-confident type of woman with bobbed heads and cigarettes; Count St.Genois and girlfriends , symbols of an erotic city life; Baroness Vera von Wassilko , as a stylish-looking young woman between two men, one light-skinned, the other dark-skinned ; Egon Erwin Kisch , the "mad reporter"; Maika , Schad's friend at the time; Agosta, the winged man, and Rasha, the black dove , who worked as artists at a fair; and the operation . Schad was a master of cool, matter-of-fact paint application, he was considered one of the best painters of human skin. For this he used the time-consuming glaze technique.

A masterpiece

Self-portrait with a model
Christian Schad , 1927
oil on wood
76 × 62 cm
Tate Modern , London, on loan from a private collection

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

In 1927 Christian Schad painted his self-portrait with a model , which today is one of the best-known and most reproduced works by the artist and the New Objectivity in general. Schad relentlessly exposes himself to his own gaze; as a “painter with a scalpel” who dissects his models and himself with cool objectivity. His gaze is suspicious, the atmosphere of the picture is hypothermic, almost icy. The people shown have nothing to say to each other. After the act has been completed, everyone is busy with themselves, the man in the three-quarter portrait and the woman in profile seem to be consciously turning away from each other. There is only a physical connection: the woman is almost completely undressed, a hint of red stocking on the left edge of the picture and a bow on the wrist are the only accents. Schad himself dresses in a greenish-transparent shirt that is laced across the chest - a stronger impression as if he were sitting there completely naked. In front of a stage-like veiled background with a dark sky and chimneys, a single blossom stands brightly, symbolizing the narcissism of the figures. The woman with her dark page cut and side parting corresponds to a type of woman popular in the twenties: neither particularly beautiful nor repulsive, her physiognomy arises from the claim to authenticity with which the Verists in particular re-conceptualized portraits during this period. Schad reported that the woman's face was that of a stranger whom he saw as a customer in a stationery store. The “sfregio”, the scar on the face, is a kind of “token of love”: the women in Naples proudly displayed the scars inflicted on them by their jealous husbands or lovers.

“I see a hand, like that of the shooting gallery girl in my self-portrait, this hand, this girl, fascinated me. I didn't care what the girl looked like, but it was the hand, and behind that this shooting gallery, a living hand next to a done thing. So I mean, this shooting gallery is not made industrially or made usable, but simply for the amusement of people, and in front of it this living hand with this little bow on it. "

- Christian Schad (about his work self-portrait with model )

time of the nationalsocialism

Copy of the Stuppach Madonna for its original location Maria Schnee-Kapelle in the collegiate church St. Peter and Alexander (Aschaffenburg)

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists Schad's work was not as "like that of many other artists of his generation degenerate art classified," none of his works were confiscated, and in 1934 he was able to work on the " Great German Art Exhibition submit". His pictures of this time no longer had the cool sharpness of earlier works, a certain lightness was due to the taste of his clients. Nevertheless, due to his Dada past, he had to fear that he would be banned from the profession by the National Socialist regime.

In view of this situation, he withdrew into inner exile , reduced painting to a few works and from 1935 took over the management of a brewery. Schad began an intensive examination of East Asian mysticism. In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed some of the early Schadographs without his knowledge. In the summers he spent nature studies in his parents' hunting lodge in Valepp in Upper Bavaria . While looking for a model, he met the young actress Bettina Mittelstädt (born June 4, 1921). While he was in Aschaffenburg for a portrait assignment , his Berlin studio was destroyed by a bomb hit in 1942. Then he moved to Aschaffenburg, where he had received the order to create a copy of the Stuppach Madonna from Matthias Grünewald .

Post-war and late work

Grave of the Schad couple in Keilberg (Bessenbach)

1947 was the year the copy was completed and Bettina married. In the 1950s, Schad made a return to expressive painting and printmaking, and the phase of “ magical realism ” began. Schad took part in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, trips took him and his wife to Tunisia, France, Italy and Switzerland. From 1960 onwards, after an interruption of more than 40 years, new photograms were created, which he continued in three work cycles until 1977. In 1962 the Schad couple moved into a newly built atelier in Keilberg near Aschaffenburg. In the early 1970s, Schad returned to the realistic painting style of his neo-objective era and published several graphic portfolios. At about the same time, the “rediscovery” of Schad began with the important exhibition in the Palazzo Reale in Milan in 1972 up to the comprehensive retrospective in the Kunsthalle Berlin in 1980.

Christian Schad died on February 25, 1982 in Stuttgart; his grave is in Keilberg. In 2000, Bettina Schad donated her husband's entire estate to the city of Aschaffenburg. She herself died on March 31, 2002.

Works (selection)

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Fonts

Honors

  • 1979: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany

As part of the series “ German Painting of the 20th Century ”, a 100-Pfennig special postage stamp was issued in 1994 by the Deutsche Bundespost with the motif Maika .

Christian Schad Foundation Aschaffenburg (CSSA)

The Christian Schad Foundation Aschaffenburg was established as a dependent foundation of the city of Aschaffenburg in 1999. It preserves the artistic and private estate and prepares his work in terms of art history.

Christian Schad Museum in Aschaffenburg

The city of Aschaffenburg will build the Christian Schad Museum by the end of 2019 as the first construction phase of the new "Museum Quarter". The estate that Schad's widow Bettina had transferred to the Christian Schad Foundation in Aschaffenburg comprises more than 3,200 works from painting to Schadography to photography . Aschaffenburg is the only location in the world that will document all of the creative periods of the “Master of the New Objectivity”.

Christian Schad Archive in Miesbach

At the end of the 1980s there had been talks between Christian Schad's son Nikolaus and the Miesbach museum friends about a possible permanent exhibition at the artist's birthplace. Nikolaus Schad was ready to donate 80 of his father's works to the city ​​of Miesbach if they set up a “Christian Schad Center” or at least provided suitable premises. These plans failed due to cost reasons. It was only at the end of 2017 that the city acquired the Christian Schad Archive from Marie-Luise Richter, widow of Schad's long-time gallery owner and publisher Günter A. Richter . It comprises materials collected since 1972 on the collaboration between Schads and Edition Richter, private correspondence and autographs of Schads and his friend Walter Serner, as well as a detailed catalog of works and the complete secondary literature on the artist. The archive is attached to the city archive as an independent scientific archive and should be publicly accessible in the future.

literature

  • Christian Schad. Catalog raisonné in 5 volumes. Published by the Christian Schad Foundation Aschaffenburg
    • Volume 1: Painting. Wienand, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-87909-919-1 .
    • Volume 2: Photography. Wienand, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-87909-930-6 .
    • Volume 3: Schadographie. Wienand, Cologne will be published in spring 2018.
    • Volume 4: Drawings, watercolors, sketches. Wienand, Cologne will be published in autumn 2019.
    • Volume 5: Prints. Wienand, Cologne will be published in autumn 2020.
  • Tobia Bezzola (arrangement): Christian Schad 1894–1982. Exhibition catalog, Zurich / Munich / Emden 1998, ISBN 3-9520917-7-4 .
  • V. Dollenmaier: The eroticism in the work of Christian Schad. Diss. Phil. FU Berlin. Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-2667-1 , object metadata FU Dissertations Online / Mycore 2.0.2
  • Ingrid Jenderko-Sichelschmid: Schadographien 1962 to 1977 . Castle Museum of the City of Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg 1994, ISBN 3-924436-04-5 .
  • Rudolf Leopold (Ed.): Christian Schad 1894–1982 retrospective. Life and Work in Context . Exhibition catalog: Leopold Museum Vienna. Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-87909-962-7 .
  • Jill Lloyd and others: Christian Schad. The early work. Exhibition catalog. Munich 2002, ISBN 3-8296-0060-7 .
  • Olaf Peters :  Schad, Christian. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 493 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Marie Luise Richter: Christian Schad. Prints and Schadographs 1913–1981. Rottach-Egern 2001, ISBN 3-923265-08-5 .
  • Günter A. Richter : Christian Schad. Monograph, bibliography, exhibition directory. Rottach-Egern 2002, ISBN 3-923265-09-3 .
  • Nikolaus Schad: Christian Schad. "My pictures are in no way meant as illustration". In: Photoresearcher. No 11, April 2008, pp. 38-43, Passau ISSN  0958-2606 .
  • Nikolaus Schad, Anna Auer (Ed.): Schadographien. The power of light. Passau 1999, ISBN 3-932949-05-6 .
  • Christian Schad Museumsfreunde Miesbach e. V. (Ed.): Christian Schad. A world-famous son returns home. Miesbach 1999, ISBN 3-932949-04-8 .

Web links

Commons : Christian Schad  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Schad, Baroness Vera Wassilko
  2. ^ Villagevoice.com
  3. ↑ Cool head and fine scar . In: The time . No. 37/1997.
  4. ↑ Carmela Thiele: Chronicler of "vicious Berlin" and Dada initiator. In: Calendar sheet (broadcast on DLF ). August 21, 2019, accessed August 21, 2019 .
  5. ↑ detail. Retrieved April 8, 2019 .
  6. ↑ A look under the skin . In: The time . No. 29/1980.
  7. ↑ Irene Netta, Ursula Keltz: 75 years of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich . Ed .: Helmut Friedel. Self-published by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88645-157-7 , p. 228 .
  8. ↑ Castle Museum
  9. ^ Christian Schad Museum Aschaffenburg
  10. ↑ http://www.kulturvision-aktuell.de/schad-archiv-stadt-miesbach-2018/
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personal data
SURNAME Schad, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Miesbach , Upper Bavaria
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1982
Place of death Stuttgart