Carl Otto Müller (painter)
Carl Otto Müller (born October 28, 1901 in Coburg , † December 28, 1970 in Munich ), known as the " Cézanne des Altmühltal", is considered the most important painter who lived and painted in the Altmühltal in the 20th century .
Life
Müller spent his childhood in Ernstthal in Thuringia , where the family owned a glass factory . From 1912 to 1917 he attended the Ernestinum secondary school in Coburg and received private painting and drawing lessons from the Coburg court painter Heinrich Höllein . After the family moved to Kipfenberg near Eichstätt , he attended secondary school in Eichstätt from 1917 . In 1918 he went to the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich , where he was a master student with Robert Engels in 1923/1924 . In 1924 he traveled to Florence and Tuscany for several months and then enrolled at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . He visited the master workshop with Karl Caspar .
From 1927 to 1941 he worked as an advertising designer for the Phoebus-Palast cinema in Munich. In 1927 he joined the Munich Artists' Association (formerly " Feldgrauer Künstlerbund "). A stay in Paris followed . In 1928 he became a member of the Münchner Künstlergenossenschaft (MKG) and a member of the jury, later Deputy Chairman of the MKG. In 1930 he married Ilse Becker. In 1931 seven of his paintings were destroyed in the fire in the Munich Glass Palace .
In 1933/1935 he came into conflict with the National Socialist art policy, but was still able to exhibit. He took part in the exhibition “Berlin Art” in Munich, in 1936 in the International Olympic Art Exhibition in Berlin and in 1937 in the exhibition “14 Munich Painters” in the Munich gallery Friedrich Heinrich Zinckgraf . In 1937/1939 he was able to exhibit at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (USA). In 1938 he was represented at the first exhibition of the comradeship of artists in the Maximilianeum in Munich.
During these years in Munich he spent a few summer weeks in Kipfenberg every year and painted Altmühl landscapes, among other things. 1940 followed a stay in the Baltic Sea (Fischland) with Fritz Hülsmann (1894–1949) and Berlin painters. In 1941 he was drafted as a war painter to the von Manstein Army Group and was in Romania, southern Russia and the Crimea until he was released after illness. When the comradeship of artists took over the Heymann painting school in Munich's Türkenstrasse in 1941 , he taught painting and graphics there. From 1942 to 1944 he painted a Don Quixote cycle of 18 pictures, pieces of flowers, landscapes and portraits and exhibited in the United Workshops . After the Maximilianeum was bombed out, he took part in replacement exhibitions by Munich artists in Garmisch , Reichenhall , Mühldorf am Inn and Rosenheim , and in 1943 in the exhibition “ Young Art in the German Empire ” in Vienna , which was closed as “ degenerate ”. In 1944/1945 his studio on Barer Strasse was badly hit by bombs. He then moved to alternative quarters in Kipfenberg.
In 1945 he became deputy district administrator of Eichstätt and was involved in the reconstruction and expansion of his parents' glass factory in Grösdorf- Kipfenberg. In 1946 he was able to take part in an exhibition in the Stuttgart Art Cabinet. From 1948 to 1950 he built a villa with a studio in Grösdorf based on the model of Pfünz Castle and stayed in the Altmühltal, even though he kept visiting Munich. In 1953 he became president of the Neue Münchener Künstlergenossenschaft and repeatedly directed the annual exhibitions in the Haus der Kunst . From 1954 to 1970 he was the organizer of all internationally important exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst. During these years he made numerous trips to Paris and Spain . In the Altmühltal he liked to paint with painters, whom he gathered around him as a “student”.
He returned from his last trip abroad seriously ill. CO Müller was buried in the Grösdorf cemetery; the tombstone with its characteristic painter monogram COM was created by the sculptor Franz Mikorey . Müller's artistic life's work includes 800 paintings, watercolors and graphics.
Honors
CO Müller was honored many times, in 1953 by the Art Prize of the City of Munich, in 1959 with the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class, in 1966 as Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Francaise and with the Bavarian Order of Merit . Probably the most important honor he received posthumously through the permanent display of paintings, drawings and graphics in the "CO Müller Gallery" in the Eichstätt District Office, Residenzplatz 1 (since 1979).
Appreciation
Even if CO Müller was called the "Cézanne of the Altmühltal", he never systematically tried to match the style of the Provencal Paul Cézanne . In particular, Müller's still lifes with flowers and his (self) portraits have a sensual and atmospheric density that inevitably reminds the viewer of Cézanne's pictorial language. After the Second World War he continued to paint, but was also an entrepreneur, local politician and a regional, national and international juror, art official and exhibition organizer. He was always open to new artistic trends, even if he saw himself as part of the critical tradition of “painterly painting”.
literature
- Wilhelm Rüdiger (Ed.): Young art in the German Empire. (Catalog for the exhibition from February to March 1943 in the Künstlerhaus Vienna ) Ehrlich & Schmidt, Vienna 1943.
- Wilhelm Rüdiger (ed.): Eduard Aigner, Joseph Mader, CO Müller, Reinhold Pallas. (Catalog for the exhibition from April 23 to May 30, 1955) Städtische Galerie, Munich 1955.
- Wilhelm Rüdiger (ed.): The painter CO Müller. Donau Courier, Ingolstadt 1976.
- 7th annual art calendar 1986 of the Sparkasse Eichstätt. Eichstätt 1986. (with biography)
- Peter Leuschner : The CO Müller of the Altmühltal. In: Das Jura-Haus , Volume 7 (2001/2002), pp. 26–33.
Web links
- Literature by and about Carl Otto Müller in the catalog of the German National Library
- On the life and work of Müller
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Müller, Carl Otto |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Müller, CO; Cézanne des Altmühltal (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 28, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Coburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 28, 1970 |
| Place of death | Munich |