Olga Markowa Meerson

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Self portrait

Olga Markowa Meerson (born December 5, 1880 in Moscow , † 1929 or July 1, 1930 in Berlin ) was a Russian modern painter , a student of Henri Matisse and the first wife of Heinz Pringsheim .

Life

Olga Markowa Meerson first studied in Munich , among others with Wassily Kandinsky , and from 1908 in France with Matisse . She was in contact with Thomas Mann ; A letter from Olga Meerson dated June 2, 1911 to Thomas Mann, in which the origin of the name “Tadzio” is discussed, has been preserved in the Thomas Mann Archives of ETH Zurich . Tadzio is a main character in Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice .

Henri Matisse, 1911

Meerson also tried to get close to Matisse after he had retired from teaching. She visited him frequently in Issy and received his return visits on the Boulevard des Invalides. In 1911 Matisse and Meerson portrayed each other; one of Olga Markowa Meerson's Matisse portraits shows the painter reading and lying on a bed. This painting is rare in that Matisse was very reluctant to put himself on display and was apparently unusually relaxed when Olga Markowa Meerson portrayed him. Hilary Spurling wrote about Matisse and Meerson: “Matisse relaxed for her as he rarely did for the camera, or for the various interviewers, who tried over the next forty years to portray him in words. He was a wary and defensive sitter [...] With Meerson, in the summer of 1911, he lowered his guard. "

For his part, Matisse not only painted Meerson, but also used her as a model for his sculpture Seated Nude , which was also created in 1911. Meerson and Matisse probably had a liaison with each other, which aroused the jealousy of Amélie, Matisse's wife. After Matisse had separated from her, Olga Markowa Meerson moved back to Munich and married Heinz Pringsheim in 1912 .

Portrait of Klaus Mann , 1926
Hotel Adlon, 1927

After this marriage she lived with Pringsheim in Berlin. In 1913 their daughter Tamara was born, who later married the mathematician Theodor Estermann . Heinz Pringsheim's marriage was evidently not without controversy in his family. Elisabeth Castonier later wrote a letter to Mary Tucholsky : “His, Heinzi's, first wife was the Russian painter Olga Merson [sic!] - with whom my mother was able to chat in Russian in Paris . It was said at the time that O. was an " anarchist " and my mother always feared that she would let go of one at her monthly jour fixe's to see whether - but she didn't. Instead, Olga jumped out of the Adlon after the First World War and Heinzi married a singer who could not become famous [...] "

Olga Pringsheim suffered from depression . In 1929 she passed away; she threw herself from the fourth floor of the Hotel Adlon in Berlin.

She is one of those women in art who are currently largely forgotten.

literature

  • Hilary Spurling : Matisse the Master. A Life of Henri Matisse 1909–1954 , Penguin Books 2005.
    • German: Matisse - life and work , translated by Jürgen Blasius, DuMont, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-8321-7704-3 .
  • Dagmar Frings and Jörg Kuhn: The Borchardts. In the footsteps of a Berlin family, Berlin Hentrich & Hentrich 2011, p. 51 (Olga Meerson in 1909 as a guest at the painter Felix Borchardt's house in Paris, 21, Rue Octave Feuillet) and p. 135, ISBN 978-3 -942271-17-2 .

Web links

Commons : Olga Markowa Meerson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The dates of life are apparently controversial. A Commentary in Exile in Fog Land. Elisabeth Castonier's letters to Mary Tucholsky: Eine Chronik , ed. by Deborah Vietor-Engländer , Bern 2010, ISBN 978-3039100378 , p. 518 states that Olga Markusovna Meerson was born on November 23, 1878 and committed suicide in 1929; the same year of death, but the year of birth 1880 is mentioned in the commentary on Thomas Mann, Letters II 1914–1923. Text and commentary in one volume , ed. by Thomas Sprecher et al., Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 978-3100483713 , p. 542. In Hedwig Pringsheim's diary, July 1, 1930 is given as the date of death (see google books) . Rizzoli, Collecting Matisse , Flammarion 1999, ISBN 978-2080135414 , p. 12 claims that the painter was born in 1878 and only committed suicide in 1934 or later, at least after the Nazis came to power.
  2. ↑ Portrait of Henri Matisse - Olga Meerson on desdeelotroladodelcuadro.blogspot.de
  3. ↑ Thomas Mann Archive ( Memento from July 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ The letter was published in TJ Reed, Thomas Mann. "The death in venice". Text, materials, commentary , Munich 1983, p. 86 f. printed.
  5. ^ Hilary Spurling: Matisse the master: a life of Henri Matisse, the conquest of color, 1909-1954 . Penguin Books, 2005, ISBN 0-14-190974-9 (English, title page on GoogleBooks [accessed February 6, 2020]).
  6. ^ Peter Schjeldahl, Art as Life. The Matisse we never knew , in: The New Yorker , August 29, 2005
  7. ↑ Exile in Fog Land. Elisabeth Castonier's letters to Mary Tucholsky. Eine Chronik , Bern (Peter Lang) 2010, ISBN 978-3039100378 , p. 108
  8. ↑ Thus the note on a diary entry by Thomas Mann in Thomas Mann, Diaries 1918–1921 ; ed. by Peter de Mendelssohn , Frankfurt am Main (S. Fischer Verlag) ² 1979, ISBN 3-10-048192-5 , p. 787.
  9. ↑ Thomas Mann, Diaries 1918–1921 ; ed. by Peter de Mendelssohn , Frankfurt am Main (S. Fischer Verlag) ² 1979, ISBN 3-10-048192-5 , p. 787
personal data
SURNAME Meerson, Olga Markowa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pringsheim, Olga
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH 1929 or July 1, 1930
Place of death Berlin