Friedrich Ludwig (painter)

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Friedrich Ludwig (born October 25, 1895 in Wieslet (southern Black Forest), † January 22, 1970 in Gabersee near Wasserburg am Inn) was a German expressionist painter .

Life

Birthplace of Friedrich Ludwig

Friedrich Ludwig is born as the ninth of seventeen children of a farming family. After attending primary school and training as a painter, he worked as a decorator in Zurich from 1913 to 1917 . Although a socialist pacifist , he reluctantly enlisted in German military service in 1917.

In 1920 Ludwig joined the Badenweiler Circle , a group of like-minded people such as Annette Kolb , René Schickele , Thomas Mann , Emil Bizer , Julius Meier-Graefe and others.

In 1922 he traveled to Italy and came into contact with the works of Piero della Francesca (1416–1492), which made a lasting impression on him. Inspired by his first trip, he visits Italy a second time in 1924. However, no works from this period have been discovered to date.

From 1922 to 1926, Ludwig completed an apprenticeship at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.

In 1926 he was admitted to the Julian Academy in Paris, famous not only for its education, but also for artists such as Paul Cézanne , Paul Gauguin , Émile Bernard , Maurice Denis (one of the founders of the artist group Les Nabis ), Pierre Bonnard , Edouard Vuillard , Aristide Maillol and Achille Laugé . The period from 1928 to 1930, surrounded and influenced by Parisian artists, is considered to be Ludwig's most creative period.

In 1931 Ludwig sought his inner peace in Bad Reichenhall . This period is characterized by pictures of nature and landscapes. In 1934, his first official exhibition in Munich was declared “un-German” by Nazi Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and banned: “If the stuff isn't off the walls by tomorrow, I'll let it hang up and pour gasoline over it.”

In 1935 the Neupert Gallery in Zurich offered Ludwig an exhibition of his work. He rejects an offer to stay in Switzerland after this successful exhibition and subsequently travels via Bellinzona to the Adriatic Sea, to Paris and via Wieslet back to Bad Reichenhall, where he settles in 1940. Here he paints his series The Blue Mountains . After Germany surrendered in 1945, the Americans gave him permission to paint again without restrictions and moved to Berchtesgaden .

Ludwig married Christel Sprengel on December 27, 1954, and their son Michael was born in 1955. In 1956 Ludwig exhibited two of his works in Munich together with the group Der Blaue Reiter . Several extensive and successful exhibitions followed at the Karin Hielscher gallery in Munich, as well as several meetings with the art critic and historian Reinhard Müller-Mehlis. In 1959 his wife left him and moved to Piding with their son Michael.

In 1965 he exhibited in the Regensburg gallery. His wife made initial suspicions about his impaired mental health in a letter to the Swiss art historian Werner Müller. Ludwig seems at times confused and absent-minded. On July 31, 1968, he was admitted to the Gabersee mental hospital near Wasserburg am Inn. In 1969, his son Michael died by suicide at the age of 13. Friedrich Ludwig died on January 22, 1970 in Gabersee hospital. He is buried next to his son in Piding.

plant

In his pictures, intangible spirits can arise. Cantings and refractions contain symbolically indicated figures, schemes, faces. Trimmed figures protruding into the picture have something transitory and unsteady about them. Its individual figures are much more compact. For Ludwig, spatial expanse and three-dimensional volumes formed the occasion for a multitude of images that, in addition to the German Expressionists, testify to the individual path of the loner in European art of the time after Cezanne: a colourist of high grades whose discovery must now be made up ( Reinhard Müller -Mehlis ).

“Ludwig was a brilliant and extremely agile, genuine and enthusiastic artist,” recalls the Zurich art historian Werner Y. Müller. "A born painter who only lived in color dreams and, like a child, enjoyed the colorful wonder of things over and over again."

He is counted among the "second generation expressionists" (also "lost" or "forgotten" generation). In old age, Ludwig pretended to have burned his pictures; it was almost forgotten in the art world. Sigurd Marien rediscovered around 2000 Ludwig paintings in 1984. They were presented to the public from 1999 to 2012 in changing exhibitions in Ludwig's hometown Wieslet in a Friedrich Ludwig Museum.

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personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German expressionist painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Wieslet (Southern Black Forest)
DATE OF DEATH 22nd January 1970
Place of death Gabersee near Wasserburg am Inn