Cäcilie Graf-Pfaff

Cäcilie Graf-Pfaff (born August 5, 1862 in Erlangen ; died July 8, 1939 in Nuremberg ) was a German naturalist painter and graphic artist .

Life

Cäcilie Graf-Pfaff spent her childhood in Erlangen. From the Burgberg near Erlangen, where her father Prof. Friedrich Pfaff, lecturer in mineralogy, had a large garden, she could see all the way to Nuremberg. At the age of twelve she received painting lessons, at 16 she was allowed to go to Munich to study art. Her first marriage was W. Bader, then in 1902 the painter Oskar Graf and from then on called herself Graf-Pfaff. She was a student of Gabriel von Max (1885), Alexander von Liezen-Mayer (1886) and Nikolaus Gysis (1887/88), later in the graphic with Oskar Graf. In the etching she accompanied the development of her husband Oskar Graf.

Eulenspiegel (1935)

Sermon on the Bird (around 1926)

Well known from her later works are u. a. "Das Nabtal", "Till Eulenspiegel", "Mondnacht", "Franziskus preaches to the birds", "The blind violinist", "Traumbrücke", "Traumgestalten" and "Mutterliebe". The two pictures “Hohenstaufenburg in Italy” and “Rock World in Saxon Switzerland” are in the possession of the “German Historical Museum” in Berlin. Her cityscapes from Italy and Meersburg on Lake Constance should also be emphasized. In her pictures she shows a tendency towards poetic and dreamy perception.

Her love was also for Japanese and Chinese art. Under her direction, the large exhibition "Japan and East Asia in Art" was created in Munich in 1909. In 1925 the "Japanese Ghost Book" with 142 illustrations was published by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt in Stuttgart, for which she wrote the text. Also in 1925 she became the first chairwoman of the “Munich Artists' Association”, and she was also a board member of the “Association for Original Etching”.

She was also active as a poet, in which she wrote poems about the war etchings by her husband Oskar Graf, who also worked as a war painter. (The war etchings and the poems are published by Bruckmann-Verlag, Munich).

Cäcilie and her husband Oskar Graf lived together in Freiburg im Breisgau , Dachau and most recently in Munich- Schwabing . She died on July 8, 1939 in Nuremberg. She was buried in Munich in the forest cemetery .

literature

• Book "Oscar and Cäcilie Graf - Etching" published by Franz Hanfstaengl, Munich
• Photo book Salzburg by Hermann Kerber, KuK court book dealer, Salzburg, with 200 pictures of Oscar and Cäcilie
• Documentation about Cäcilie Graf-Pfaff and Oskar Graf in the monthly magazine “Das Bild” 1936, issue 12, pages 376–383 (with 6 images) published by CF Müller, Karlsruhe
• “General encyclopedia of visual artists from antiquity to the present” by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, volume 14
• Commemorative document for the memorial exhibition by Cäcilie Graf-Pfaff in Munich from May 21, 1940 to June 9, 1940 with 10 illustrations and poems by her
• The "Japanese Ghost Book" (from 1925) with 142 illustrations, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart