Alexander Rihm

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Alexander "Alex" Rihm (born January 24, 1904 in Singen (Hohentwiel) ; † July 3, 1944 in Lestina , Bohemia ) was a German graphic artist and painter .

Life

Alexander Rihm was born on January 24, 1904 in a middle-class family. His father, Alexander Rihm senior, was a Protestant pastor in Singen. His mother, Frieda Rihm, née Zimmermann, came from Waldshut .

In 1923 Rihm obtained his Abitur at the Oberrealschule in Konstanz (today's Alexander von Humboldt Gymnasium ) and began studying painting at the State Art School (today: State Academy of Fine Arts ) in Karlsruhe, where he became a master student of Ernst Würtenberger . After 1925 he continued his studies at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin with Hans Meid , Emil Orlik and Max Slevogt until 1927. After his return to Singen, he began an apprenticeship as a painter, which he completed with a journeyman's examination in order to expand his manual and technical skills. After his family moved from Singen to Konstanz in 1935, Alexander Rihm began to paint the Lake Constance landscape.

On a trip to Switzerland in 1930, Rihm was particularly impressed by works by Gustave Courbet , van Gogh and Cézanne when he visited the Oskar Reinhart collection “Am Römerholz” in Winterthur .

In 1938, Alexander Rihm founded the “ New Constance Painters Group 1938 ” together with the Bodensee artists Fritz and Elisabeth Mühlenweg , Sepp Biehler and Werner Rohland , which dissolved again in 1940. Their aim was to address a wider public, to make their art better known and to cope with the organizational and financial effort together.

In 1940 Rihm was drafted into the air news force in Bohemia, but continued to be an artist in his free time. Many landscapes were created during his military service.

Alexander Rihm died of a heart attack on July 3, 1944 while bathing in a lake near Lestina (south of Prague ). His body was buried in Constance on Lake Constance .

Rihm was a recognized artist in the Lake Constance area. One of his greatest admirers and supporters was Heinrich Schmidt-Pecht , the director of the Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz at the time , who saw him as an ideal successor.

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The subjects of his pictures were still lifes , figurative compositions and landscapes . Rihm concentrated on the factual representation of the objective ; his balanced picture compositions impress with their clear form, the effect of the smoothly applied color and a subdued coloring. His graphics - drawings , watercolors , woodcuts and, above all, his paper cuttings - are characterized by the economy of means. "Alexander Rihm mastered all painting techniques in his oeuvre - we find executed pictures as well as studies in oil, watercolor and pastel techniques as well as numerous works in various graphic techniques."

Exhibitions

  • Constance painter group 1938; Kunstverein Konstanz (Wessenberghaus) April 2 to 23, 1939
  • Constance painter group 1938; Kunstverein Mannheim September 1 to 29, 1940
  • Constance painter group 1938, Kunstverein Freiburg October - November 1940
  • H. Schmidt-Pecht and A. Rihm Memorial Exhibition, Kunstverein Konstanz (Wessenberghaus) October 1950
  • Alexander Rihm Memorial Exhibition, Kunstverein Konstanz (Wessenberghaus) September 13 to October 11, 1964
  • Alexander Rihm Memorial Exhibition, Petrusgemeinde Konstanz from July 24, 1976
  • Artistic estate of Alexander Rihm, Rathausgalerie Konstanz 1984
  • Alexander Rihm (1904–1944) memorial exhibition , Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz January 14, 2004 to April 11, 2004

literature

  • Vollmer, Hans (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of the Fine Arts . tape 4 . VEB A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig, p. 69 .
  • Gerster, Matthäus (Ed.): The Bodenseebuch 1941 . Dr. Karl Höhn, Ulm / Danube 1941, p. 95 f .
  • Faude, Ekkehard / Stark, Barbara: Fritz Mühlenweg - painting . Ed .: Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz. Libelle Verlag, Lengwil 1999, ISBN 3-909081-84-3 .
  • Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz (ed.): See-Blick, German artists on Lake Constance in the 20th century . Stadler Verlag, Konstanz 1998, ISBN 3-7977-0437-2 .
  • Anonymous: We visit Konstanz artists - at Alexander Rihm's studio . In: Konstanzer Zeitung . July 1937.
  • Rihm, Johanna: The painter Alex Rihm, 1904–1944 . In: Hegau - magazine for history, folklore and natural history of the area between the Rhine, Danube and Lake Constance . 25th year, issue 1. 1968, p. 235 ff .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Bruker, Edgar: Speech at the opening of the exhibition in the Rathausgalerie Konstanz, masch. Typescript, Constance 1984 (Wessenberg Gallery Archive)
  2. ^ Rihm, Johanna: The painter Alex Rihm, 1904-1944 . In: Hegau - magazine for history, folklore and natural history of the area between the Rhine, Danube and Lake Constance . 25th year, issue 1. 1968, p. 235 ff .
personal data
SURNAME Rihm, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rihm, Alex (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist and painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Singing (Hohentwiel)
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1944
Place of death Lestina , Bohemia