Carl Josef Barth

Carl Barth (baptized name Karl Josef Barth ; born June 16, 1896 in Haan , † December 31, 1976 in Düsseldorf ) was a German painter . His brother was the writer Emil Barth .

Life

Barth house in Haan

Carl Barth was born as the third child of the master bookbinder Max Barth on June 16, 1896 in Haan and baptized with the name Karl Josef Barth. He attended the local elementary school from 1902 to 1910. Subsequently, Barth completed an apprenticeship as a bookbinder with his father until he was drafted into military service during the First World War in 1915 and stationed in France from May 1916 . After the severe wounding of both arms and legs in the Third Battle of Flanders in November 1917, Barth experienced the end of the war in a Düsseldorf hospital .

In 1919 Barth began his graphic training at the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts . In the spring of 1921 he moved to Munich, where he continued his training at the local arts and crafts school until 1924. From around 1922 he signed his work with Carl Barth. In 1925, Barth's first exhibition of watercolors and prints followed in Munich, after which he returned to Haan, set up his first studio in his parents' house and, from autumn of the same year, began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy as a student of Heinrich Nauen , which lasted until 1930 should.

After Carl Barth had already traveled to Italy in 1924, a study trip to southern France followed in 1927. In 1926 and 1928 he took part in exhibitions by the artist groups “The New West” and “ The Young Rhineland ”, until another solo exhibition by Barth took place in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1933 . After another study trip to the USA in 1936, Barth received the Cornelius Prize of the city of Düsseldorf in 1938 and attended the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome in 1939 . In 1940 Barth moved to Xanten , where he set up another studio in Klever Tor .

In 1941, as part of the National Socialist art policy, the confiscation of an exhibition of Carl Barth's earlier works was ordered, the exhibits of which were then returned but could no longer be shown. In 1942, several of Barth's works were destroyed as exhibits in the Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History in Münster when the city was bombed during World War II, after which the museum made a new studio available to him in Mettingen . After Barth's studio in Düsseldorf was destroyed in bombing raids in 1943, he moved to Mettingen, but returned to Haan in 1944, where he set up a new studio after the city was taken by US troops.

In 1946 a solo exhibition in the Wuppertal - Elberfeld Municipal Museum showed Barth's pictures, which had been confiscated in 1941, followed by an exhibition in Cologne in 1948 together with Gerhard Marcks and Peter Herkenrath . In the same year the monograph “The painter Carl Barth” by Hans Peters, the director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein, appears. In 1950 Carl Barth took part in the exhibition “Five Painters” in Witten with Karl Hofer and Fred Thieler, among others . In 1951 the Landesmuseum Münster shows the exhibition “Carl Barth - Otto Pankok” and the Leverkusen City Museum in 1952 shows “Carl Barth - Anton Räderscheidt”. After several other exhibitions in North Rhine-Westphalia and the award of the Karl Ernst Osthaus Prize from the city of Hagen , Barth moved again to Düsseldorf in 1953, where he set up his last studio in the Künstlerhaus Sittarder Strasse in 1954. Carl Barth died on December 31, 1976 in Düsseldorf. He was buried in the south cemetery.

Works

Barth's artistic work often changed due to the circumstances and impressions of his surroundings, with his study trips and the Second World War in particular causing drastic changes in his painting style and choice of subjects. Barth began with late Expressionist works in the 1920s, and at the beginning of the 1930s, Barth's stylistic direction changed to the parts of his work that are most noticed today, which are assigned to New Objectivity and Magical Realism . The severity of this work changed after his study trip to the USA in 1936 to a style with richer modeling of the motif, which has been repeatedly compared with works by Edward Hopper . As a result, Barth's pictures became more conventional and traditionalist, so that in the 1940s Barth was counted among the descendants of the Düsseldorf painting school of the 19th century. With the end of the Second World War, Barth's motifs also changed, so that his pictures mostly dealt with rubble and grief. At the beginning of the 1950s, Barth's style changed again to reduced and abstract forms. Barth's pictorial content from this time is determined by Mediterranean themes, due in particular to his study trips to Italy and Spain. In his late work, Barth was increasingly influenced by younger artists, so that his pictures show further reductions in motifs.

listing

• 1925 - "My Father Max Barth" - Collection PB
• 1926 - "Children with Masks" - private property USA
• 1927 - "Sick Boy" - private property, Berlin
• 1929 - "Still life with cello" - Collection PB
• 1932 - "Outlook" - Collection PB
• 1932 - "Houses on the Railway Embankment" - Düsseldorf City Museum
• 1932 - "Beach Café" - From the Heydt Museum Wuppertal
• 1932 - "Schiffschaukel" - private collection, Düsseldorf
• 1932 - “House with the Chair” - private collection, Switzerland
• 1932/33 - "Horse Racing" - City Museum Düsseldorf
• 1933 - "North Sea Port" - private collection, Cologne
• 1936 - "Amusement Local (New York)" - Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn
• 1936 - "Playland" - City Museum Düsseldorf (loan from private collection)
• 1938 - "Roman Landscape with Reclining Head" - Collection PB
• 1939 - "Still life instruments" - private collection, Cologne
• 1946 - "Cologne 1945 (Destroyed Rhine Bridge)" - Städt. Oberhausen Castle Gallery
• 1946 - “Time monster” - City Museum Düsseldorf
• 1946 - "To the mothers" - Gelsenkirchen City Museum
• 1948 - "Puppeteer" - Museum Folkwang Essen
• 1949 - "On the Canal", New Masters Picture Gallery, Dresden
• 1952 - "Santa Maria della Salute" - From the Heydt Museum Wuppertal
• 1955 - "Rheinufer" - Art Museum Düsseldorf
• 1957 - "Winter Landscape" - Art Museum Düsseldorf
• 1959 - "Gray Moon" - From the Heydt Museum Wuppertal
• 1960 - "Song to the Moon" - Museum Folkwang Essen
• 1966 - "Early Admiration" - private collection, Cologne
• 1973 - "Still life with a white head" - Collection PB

literature

• Hans Peters: The painter Carl Barth . L.Schwann, Düsseldorf 1948.
• Editors: Herbert Remmert and Peter Barth: Carl Barth (1896-1976) . With articles by Wieland Schmied, Karl Ruhrberg and Diether Schmidt. Catalog for the exhibitions in the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf and in the Remmert and Barth Gallery (1986), Düsseldorf 1986.
• Joseph A. Kruse, Bernd Kortländer (ed.): The brothers Emil and Carl Barth. Texts and pictures . Droste, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3770011279 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Josef Barth in the catalog of the German National Library