Arthur Michaelis
Arthur Michaelis (born July 27, 1864 in Leipzig ; † May 21, 1946 there ) was a German painter and graphic artist .
Life
At the age of 16 Arthur Michaelis began an apprenticeship at the Royal Art Academy and School of Applied Arts in Leipzig, where he mainly worked in the lithography workshop . From 1883 to 1887 he studied with Ludwig Nieper , the director of the facility, and attended courses at the evening academy for another year. This was followed by stays in Munich and Vienna and several trips to Italy . From 1897 it is listed in the Leipzig address books.
Illustration orders from Leipzig publishers secured his livelihood until around 1914. Postcards were published by the lithographic institute Bruno Bürger and [Carl] Ottillie without any major claims. In 1912, the art publisher Max Both brought out a series of artist postcards "Wandergrüße" and "Frohe Grüße" with pen drawings.
In 1914 Michaelis moved into a studio in the Leipziger Künstlerhaus and lived here for some time. In the beginning Michaelis' creative work mainly comprised lithographs. There were social, philosophical and religious problems in the subject, and it was not free from symbolism that was sometimes difficult to understand. Michaelis was very different from his contemporary colleagues.
The art critic Egbert Delpy described Michaelis as a “brooder and a phantasy, a conjurer of curious visions, a despiser of traditional rules and forms, an eccentric haunted by dreams, weighed down by thoughts, whose chaotic inventions made many feet falter, many eyes shied away, many heads perplexed was ".
Later, the character of his pictures changed through brighter colors, more ecstatic forms and expressionistic elements as well as difficult to interpret allegorical content, as in the graphic portfolio “Das Gebärende Nothing” from 1925.
In 1943 the Künstlerhaus fell victim to bombs, and with it his studio and most of his pictures. When Arthur Michaelis died in 1946 at the age of 86, his ashes were buried in a row grave in the New Johannisfriedhof , where they still lie after the cemetery was closed in 1971 and converted to Friedenspark .
Works (selection)
- 1912: Postcard series Wandergrüße and Happy greetings
- 1912: Horsemen of the Apocalypse , etching
- 1914: Three women and a man bathing in the forest , oil on canvas
- 1917: artist and muse , oil on canvas
- 1917: archer on horse , oil on canvas
- 1918: Six mosaic fields in the entrance to the Wünschmann House
- 1918: Lament , lithograph
- 1918: symbolic scene , gouache
- 1920: The Hermit , etching
- 1925: Graphic folder The nothing that gives birth
- 1922: Europe and the Bull , oil on canvas
- 1924: At the Ez Chaim Synagogue near Apels Garten , watercolor
- 1927: Mary with child surrounded by the four evangelist symbols ,
- 1928: River God , watercolor
- 1932: Das Echo , oil on canvas
Image examples
Wandergruß
(artist postcard)
Ez Chaim Synagogue (watercolor)
The Hermit
(etching)
Artist and Muse
(oil on canvas)
River god
(watercolor)
Mothers
(chalk lithograph)
literature
- Rainer Behrends : The painter Arthur Michaelis - a stranger . In: Forgotten avant-garde. Künstlerhaus and Nikischplatz. ( Leipziger Blätter , special issue), Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2016, ISBN 978-3-95415-055-7 , pp. 44–47
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Leipzig address books. Retrieved June 7, 2020 .
- ^ Rainer Behrends: The painter Arthur Michaelis - an unknown , p. 46
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Michaelis, Arthur |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 27, 1864 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leipzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 21, 1946 |
| Place of death | Leipzig |