Franz Xaver Stahl

Franz Xaver Stahl (born February 11, 1901 in Erding ; † November 16, 1977 there ) was a German animal painter and professor at the Munich Art Academy .

Youth and Studies

Franz Xaver Stahl was born on February 11, 1901 in the later district town of Erding , near Munich . His parents owned a decorative painting business there, which their son would one day take over. Even at a young age the boy showed a great talent for painting , which he lived out in particular during his frequent visits to his grandparents in Dachau , where he was occasionally allowed to attend Hans von Hayek's painting school as an onlooker .

In 1914 he began training as a decorative painter in his parents' company in Erding. As early as 1915, however, he had to continue this training with the master painter Albin Huber in Dachau, since his father was drafted into the army. In the winter of the same year, the young Stahl attended the school for decorative painting in Munich to deepen his education. At that time he was earning his first own money with the production of elaborate paper cuttings , which were very popular at the time.

When his new teacher was called up for military service, Stahl accepted a position as a blueprint at the Dachau military construction management in autumn 1915 , which he held until 1919. During these years he made other paper cuttings in his free time and constantly practiced painting.

In the winter semester of 1919 he was accepted at the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich and studied graphic, book and poster art with Julius Diez . There he learned various techniques of illustration and in 1920 created a series of etchings for the school. In 1921 Stahl ended his studies with Julius Diez prematurely because he could not sufficiently satisfy his personal artistic preferences in a purely arts and crafts training.

Instead, he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts with the head of the academic animal painting class Heinrich von Zügel . He took him on, although he was about to retire, apparently because he recognized steel as a special talent for this branch of painting. Angelo Jank took over the class as early as 1922 and made Stahl a master student with his own composing studio.

In 1922 and 1923 Stahl made two study trips to Bohemia and Lake Constance . In 1924 he took part for the first time in an exhibition of the Munich Artists' Cooperative in the Munich Glass Palace . On this occasion, the first of his works (“Herd in the Forest”, oil, 60 cm × 81 cm) was acquired by the Bavarian State Government , which of course meant great personal recognition for Stahl.

In June of the same year his father died and Franz Xaver Stahl had to return to Erding to continue his father's painting business until he was able to hand it over to his younger brother Josef at the beginning of the winter semester of 1925. After that he was able to resume his studies and participated once more in an exhibition of the Munich artists' cooperative in the Glaspalast. This participation was also crowned by the purchase of a large-format work (“Weide”) by the Bavarian state government.

Freelance artist and professor until 1945

To finish his studies, Stahl received a travel grant from the Academy for Holland in 1927 . There he worked for six weeks, after which he returned to Munich and settled down as a fully trained academic painter in Dachau, Munich and Erding. In the following years he continued to take part regularly in the exhibitions in the Munich Glass Palace and exhibited in his home town of Erding for the first time in 1928 to mark the 700th anniversary. Then he sent his first solo exhibitions in Plauen and Greiz .

In 1931 he moved into a studio on Nymphenburger Strasse in Munich, which he kept until 1944. On June 6th of the same year some pictures of Stahl were destroyed in the fire of the Glass Palace in Munich. From 1937 onwards, Franz Xaver Stahl regularly took part in the Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich, the propaganda exhibition of National Socialist art in the Nazi state .

With the exception of 1939, Stahl was represented with one or two of his paintings every year from 1937 to 1944 at the aforementioned Great German Art Exhibition, an unmistakable sign that he had achieved a particularly renowned position in the art world of that time. In 1940 he traveled to Prague to study .

In 1941 he joined the NSDAP, according to the apolitical artist's own statement, "following the constant urging of my Munich studio host". Shortly afterwards he was appointed head of the animal painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1942 the academy awarded him the title of professor.

In 1944, Stahl's studio on Nymphenburger Strasse burned down after a bomb attack. Many of his pictures were destroyed in the process. Stahl then moved to his studio in the art academy, but that too was soon destroyed by a bomb attack. Other pictures fell victim to this attack. Soon afterwards Stahl was called up for military service. His career as a professor at the art academy came to an early end.

Freelance artist from 1945 to 1977

In 1945, Stahl returned to his hometown of Erding from an American captivity. There he moved into his parents' house, renovated it and set up a studio.

At the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich there was no further use for him, as he was dismissed in October at the instigation of the military government together with Professors Bleeker, Knecht, Thorak and Kaspar in the course of a dismissal of former NSDAP members and Nazi artists. Only Hermann Kaspar subsequently succeeded in getting reinstallation. Despite an application, Stahl could no longer find a job; Letters from the academy management, which are in Franz Xaver Stahl's estate, show that there were not enough students to reinstall an animal painting class.

He then limited himself to his artistic work, which he first presented in the local Erdinger environment. He designed the poster for the “Erdinger Heimatwoche” in 1949 and exhibited some of his paintings there. In the following year he designed the poster “Horsehead” for the “Volks- und Landwirtschaftsfest Erding” and in 1950 he began to design pictures of horses and people from the Munich garbage disposal, when it became clear that the times for the use of animals in this profession were soon would come to an end.

In 1951 he returned to the big city with his pictures as part of an exhibition by members of the old Munich artists' cooperative in the Haus der Kunst . From then on he was again a regular guest at the exhibitions of the Munich Artists' Cooperative and over the years sent various other exhibitions in Erding and the Munich area.

In 1956, after a long illness, his mother, whom he had looked after until the end, died and so in 1957 he and his friend Theo Kärner moved into a studio at Munich's Künstlerhof, Steubenplatz 25. He kept this studio until his death in 1977.

In 1963 he married the widow of his former painter colleague Johann Georg Schlech , Margarete Schlech, née Gruber. In 1967 he equipped a joint exhibition with Constantin Gerhardinger with at least 59 works and in 1972 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Privileged Artists' Cooperative of 1968 in Munich .

Franz Xaver Stahl died unexpectedly of heart failure on November 16, 1977 in his house in Erding. He found his final resting place in the family's grave in the Erdinger Friedhof St. Paul. Franz Xaver Stahl's estate is in his home town of Erding. After the death of his wife Margarete Stahl in February 2014, Stahl's artistic and private estate passed into the possession of the city of Erding as a valuable legacy and has been open to the public since September 2014.

The work

Franz Xaver Stahl was one of the few remaining artists who specialized in animal painting in the second half of the last century. From his youth on, the rural environment and above all the observation and representation of animals in their traditional rural habitat had particularly shaped his work and his work.

In terms of style, he first followed his teachers, especially painters like Hayek, Heinrich von Zügel or Angelo Jank, and later developed a very personal, impressionistic perspective that he pursued, expanded and implemented in all of his works.

Except for a few portraits, landscapes and various graphic works in his youth, he hardly ever left this path and especially the subject of depicting animals.

His work is particularly characterized by solid craftsmanship and a deep feeling for the natural movement and nature of his objects, the animals.

Some of his pictures are in the possession of the Bavarian State Painting Collection , various were presented in the Great German Art Exhibition and after the war in the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

Later honors

Franz-Xaver-Stahl-Museum in his former studio house

Since 1972 Franz Xaver Stahl was an honorary member of the Royal Privileged Artists' Cooperative of 1868 in Munich .

From 1977 onwards, his widow Margarete looked after Stahl's estate with great dedication. But official bodies also took part and helped to prevent Franz Xaver Stahl and his work from being forgotten.

As early as 1978, when the current districts of Altenerding and Langengeisling were incorporated into various renaming of street names, the former Fehlbachstrasse was named after him, first in "Professor Stahl Strasse" and later, at the widow's request, in "Franz Xaver Stahl Strasse ".

In 1991 the district of Erding published the comprehensive work “Franz Xaver Stahl” by the art scholar Ilse Paula Dolinschek, an illustrated book in which Stahl's work is impressively presented on 304 pages with many color tables. The foreword for this was written by the then Bavarian State Minister for Education, Culture, Science and Art, Hans Zehetmair .

The city of Erding and various private organizations also repeatedly initiated exhibitions in which works from the artist's estate could be seen, and the Erding Historical Association had a memorial stone attached to his home as early as 1981. In 2005, the same association organized the painter's last major exhibition in collaboration with the widow Stahl, in which works from the graphic estate that had not been seen before were shown. As the Franz Xaver Stahl Museum , the painter's Biedermeier residential and studio house (built in 1840) has been owned by the city of Erding since 2014 and is open to the public. It shows several gallery rooms with works by Stahl (and Johann Georg Schlech) as well as originally furnished private rooms and Franz Xaver Stahl's studio, unchanged since his death, as a rare example of a preserved artist's studio from the first half of the 20th century.

literature

• Ilse Paula Dolinschek: Franz Xaver Stahl 1901–1977 , published by the district of Erding, Erding 1991.
• Heike Schmidt-Kronseder, Wolfgang Kronseder: Franz Xaver Stahl 1901–1977 - graphics, sketches, studies . An exhibition by the Erding Historical Society in collaboration with Margarete Stahl. Erding 2005.
• Wolfgang Johannes Bekh: Land behind the Limes. Declarations of love to Bavaria u. Austria Land behind the Limes . DachauVerlagsanstalt Bayerland, Dachau 1986, ISBN 3-922394-60-4 , pp. 69-72 ( Franz Xaver Stahl - Heinrich von Zügel's last pupil - a great painter of the animal world ).
• Birgit Jooss: The “joyful collaboration” of the Munich Art Academy in the “national survey of the people”. The years 1924 to 1944 . In: Gestalt - Form - Figure. Hans Wimmer and the Munich School of Sculpture . Güstrow 2008, pp. 57, 59 and 60.
• Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 (= Fischer pocket books vol. 17153). Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , p. 523.
• Author: Stahl, Franz Xaver . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 4 : Q-U . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1958, p. 339 .
• Susanna Partsch : Stahl, Franz Xaver . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 105, de Gruyter, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-023271-4 , p. 424.

Web links

• Some pictures by Franz Xaver Stahl
• Franz Xaver Stahl Museum in Erding
• Street in Erding named after Franz Xaver Stahl (map)
• Article in Merkur-online on the 30th anniversary of Franz Xaver Stahl's death

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} sueddeutsche.de: Once "grazing cows" for Adolf Hitler
2. ^ Book of the district of Erding about Franz Xaver Stahl .
3. ↑ erding.de: Franz-Xaver Steel Museum