Hans Wacker

Hans Wacker , also Hans Wacker-Elsen (born December 21, 1868 as Johann Heinrich Wacker in Düsseldorf , † March 26, 1958 in Ferch am Schwielowsee ), was a German painter .

Life

Wacker was born the son of a blacksmith. Little is known about his childhood and adolescence. The last two years of his school days from 1882 onwards he received lessons at the Franciscan monastery school in Düsseldorf . Here he received special training in artistic drawing . 1884 Hans Wacker apprentice was with his father to the artistic blacksmith to learn.

In 1885 he met Hubert Salentin for the first time , who recognized Wacker's artistic talent. In 1886 Wacker gave up his work as a blacksmith and secretly emigrated to the Netherlands to study the works of the important Dutch and Flemish masters of the Golden Age in the museums there. He financed his living with various odd jobs. Hubert Salentin introduced Wacker to Andreas Achenbach in 1892 . Both taught him and encouraged his desire to become a painter.

After his marriage to Mrs. Elise in 1894, his son Leonhard was born in 1895. Four other children emerged from this marriage: Luise ("Lucie", * 1896), Otto (* 1898), Elise ("Else", * 1900) and Helmut (* 1906). Since his painting could not yet support the growing family, he worked again as a blacksmith from 1895. After a serious accident at work, he had to give up this activity and founded a porcelain painting company with his wife in 1896 .

In 1898 Achenbach and Salentin arranged the first small exhibition of his works in an art dealer in Düsseldorf. Study trips in 1901 took him to Zandvoort , Antwerp, Paris and in 1904 to Belgium, France and Switzerland. In 1906, the joint operation with his wife had to file for bankruptcy due to competition from a large Cologne company . In 1907 a small special exhibition in the Eduard Schulte Gallery saved him from dire need. It received good reviews and eight paintings were sold. In the following years he was present in various exhibitions and made further study trips to Italy and the Netherlands. In 1911 the painter Gustav Schönleber , a friend of Hans Wacker, supported exhibitions of his works in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe ( Badischer Kunstverein ) and in 1912 in Basel. In 1912 major private exhibitions followed in Kassel, Braunschweig, Mannheim and Strasbourg. The City Museum in Strasbourg acquired a painting by Hans Wacker in the same year.

In 1913 the Wacker family moved from Düsseldorf to the Netherlands, first to The Hague and a short time later to Amsterdam. Although he received artistic recognition in some exhibitions here, he was hardly able to sell pictures. (“Duitsche Meesters weren't asked.”) It didn't help that he temporarily put a Dutch-sounding name (“Wacker-Elsen”) under his pictures. In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, he moved to Berlin with his family. In the following six years the galleries Eduard and Herrmann Schulte (Düsseldorf, Berlin, Cologne) organized several exhibitions of his works.

But here, too, the material success, especially due to the war years, was rather modest despite artistic recognition. "Born poor, badly brought up - he becomes a painter of himself, inevitably begging art, without protection and high favor", he noted in his diary in 1918 and continued: "The painter must have not only artistic luck, but also mercurial luck". In 1919, shortly after Wacker's 50th birthday , the Helbing Gallery in Berlin held a large special exhibition with his works from all creative periods. The art critics had laudatory reviews. In 1920 Wacker was represented for the first time in the Great Berlin Art Exhibition . That meant an artistic breakthrough for him. In the same year Wacker became friends with Käthe Kollwitz . In 1921 he exhibited in the Hugo Perls gallery in Berlin. An exhibition followed in 1926 at the Caspari Gallery in Munich.

In 1928 Hans Wacker was able to acquire a small property in Ferch am Schwielowsee. Since then he has been close friends with Karl Hagemeister .

From 1933 onwards invitations to send to art exhibitions went unanswered by Hans Wacker. He did not want to have any contact with the National Socialist art business and avoided the public. In 1943, on his 75th birthday, he turned down all representatives of the press. In 1948 Hans Wacker wanted to put together another exhibition of his work. However, this attempt failed because of the small number of images that could be achieved.

Fake Van Gogh paintings

In 1932, his son, the art dealer Otto Wacker , was convicted in a sensational trial for selling around 30 forged Van Gogh paintings. What could never be clarified, however, was the authorship of the forgery , which was initially certified as genuine by all leading experts of the time. These included Julius Meier-Graefe , whose publication “Vincent van Gogh” (1910) was the painter's first biography in the world, and the Dutchman Jacob-Baart de la Faille , without whose expertise hardly any van could be found from the 1920s at the latest. Gogh painting. De la Faille even included the forged paintings in his four-volume catalog raisonné by van Gogh. While Meier-Graefe had to admit in the course of the lawsuit against Wacker that he had obviously made a mistake, de la Faille initially withdrew his expertise and then later declared five of the paintings by Wacker to be genuine.

It was not the contradicting experts, but scientific examinations (especially X-rays) that ultimately decided the lawsuit against Otto Wacker. In order to forge Van Gogh paintings in a quality with which they found their way into important museums and private collections, a special painterly skill was required. This ability was largely possessed by Hans Wacker, the father of the convicted Otto Wacker. Long before that, he had dealt intensively with Van Gogh. In a painting from 1912 (mountain slope) one can see beyond doubt that he tried to paint in its style . In the undulating (wavy intertwined) movement of the pasty layers of paint that are rotating in the trees, in the clear relief of his strong brushstrokes and the extreme close-up of the motif, one can recognize essentials that van Gogh's style of painting in his late work from the time of Stay at the Hospital of Saint-Remy.

Since he mastered Van Gogh's technique, it is obvious to see Hans Wacker as the painter of the forgeries offered by his son Otto Wacker. This view is also underlined by the fact that decades after his trial, Otto Wacker told his doctor, a Berlin art collector, confidentially that the fake Van Gogh paintings were from his father. However, Hans Wacker was never publicly charged. Perhaps it was just his enthusiasm for the French Impressionists and their successors that his son exploited for dubious business. Especially in pictures between 1910 and 1915 we repeatedly find works by Hans Wacker that show the influence of this style. In addition to the undisputed great life of the artist, the fascination of his ultimately unsettled connection to the most spectacular art forgery affair of the 20th century will always remain.

plant

For a long time Wacker was a seeker between the old masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools as well as the French Impressionists and their successors. But he found his own personal style. It turns out that “Hans Wacker does not represent a direct school and has overcome all local influences. A strong direction of its own is proclaimed in the style and palette ”( Julius Meier-Graefe on the occasion of the special exhibition on the artist's 50th birthday in the Hugo Helbig gallery in 1919). Wacker is best known for his impressionistic landscapes and seascapes , which are characterized by a high level of security of contours and exquisite coloring . Wacker captures the moving play of light, which changes the landscape and the sea at any time of day, plays picturesquely with the atmosphere and the charm of the mood of the fleeting moment and the manifold reflections on water and land. In addition, there are still lifes , portraits and allegorical scenes in his work . Wacker has always emphasized the artistic quality of his pictures as the most important aspect of painting. Earning a living was just a chore for him.

Works by the painter are in the Städtisches Museum Straßburg (Niederrheinische Landschaft, 1912), in the Märkisches Museum in Berlin (self-portrait, Düsseldorf 1907) and in the museum of the Havelländische Malerkolonie in Ferch (self-portrait, 1909; Navy, undated.).

Exhibitions

• Exhibitions in the Kunsthalle and Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (1909–1912) as well as in the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren (1911–1912)
• Exhibitions in the Künstlerhaus Berlin and Amsterdam Sint Lucas as well as Atelier Pieter de Hooghstraat 82 (1913)
• large special exhibition with works from all creative periods in the Galerie Helbing, Munich / Berlin (1919)
• Participation in the Great Berlin Art Exhibition 1920 (No. 752)
• Special exhibition Hans Wacker: Paintings, watercolors, drawings from July 13th to August 11th, 1963 in the Märkisches Museum in Berlin
• Special exhibition in the Arkadenhof gallery from November 20 to December 18, 2004 in Löbau
• Exhibition as part of the special exhibition Havelländische Malerkolonie - Old Masters from 6 to 24 June 2006 in Ferch / Potsdam together with works by Schuch and Hagemeister; Model of the exhibition poster: H. Wacker: Niederrheinische Landschaft from 1902
• Hans Wacker - 1868 (Düsseldorf) to 1958 (Ferch) - A life for art . Exhibition of 70 paintings for the 140th birthday and 50th anniversary of the painter's death from March 18 to April 1, 2008 in the city museum of the state capital Düsseldorf
• Hans Wacker = Jan Tenhagen = Vincent van Gogh? - A painter's life's work . Exhibition from November 9th to 30th, 2012 in the historical bath house in Kulmbach
• Hans Wacker-Elsen - German painter, 1868-1958 - Sea and harbor pictures / portraits from the collections of Klaus Köstner and Michael Voigt . Exhibition from June 21 to August 31, 2014 in the Bad Lobenstein Regional Museum
• Hans Wacker-Elsen, 1868-1958 - Michael Voigt Collection . Exhibition from September 9 to November 5, 2017 in the Ostsächsische Kunsthalle Pulsnitz
• Hans Wacker-Elsen, German painter 1868–1958 - From the Michael Voigt collection . Exhibition from September 13 to October 31, 2019 in the monument and museum "Reiterhaus" Neusalza-Spremberg

literature

• Müller-Singer: General Artist Lexicon. Volume VI. Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt am Main 1922.
• Dressler: Dressler's art manual . Edition 1930, Volume 2, Curtius, Berlin 1930.
• Wacker, Hans . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 35 : Libra-Wilhelmson . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1942, p. 8 .
• Wacker, Hans . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 5 : V-Z. Supplements: A-G . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1961, p. 61 .
• General-Anzeiger Düsseldorf. Born in 1909, No. 12.
• Nieuwe Rotterdam Courant. Born in 1913.
• Catalog for the special exhibition on the artist's 50th birthday in the Hugo Helbig gallery. 1919.
• Catalog of the Great Berlin Art Exhibition 1920. Berlin 1920.
• German art paper. 13, 1929, p. 91 f., 345 ff., 375 f.
• Neue Leipziger Zeitung from April 7, 1932.
• German art paper. 16, 1932, pp. 34 f., 83, 93 f.
• Art and economy. 13, 1932, No. 5, pp. 76-78, 88.
• The art trade. 46, 1954, issue 2, p. 7.
• Journal of the Association of Visual Artists Germany. 9, 1958, No. 6, p. 12.
• Visual arts. Dresden 1958, p. 507.
• The art and the beautiful home. 56, 1958, supplement, p. 284.
• The art trade. 50, 1958, No. 4, p. 22. (Obituary)
• Diaries from different periods of life, manuscript, private property in Berlin and Potsdam.
• Frank Arnau: Art of Forgers. Counterfeiters of art. Econ, Düsseldorf 1959.
• Joachim Goll: Art forger. Seemann, Leipzig 1962.
• Catalog of the special exhibition by Hans Wacker (1868–1958) from July 13 to August 11, 1963 in the Märkisches Museum Berlin.
• Velio Bergemann: Ferch in painting. Schmergow, Berlin 2000.
• Georg Kretschmann: The fascination of counterfeiting. Parthas, Berlin 2001
• Klaus Fiedler: Hans Wacker. On the trail of the secret. In: Weltkunst. 73, 2003, pp. 1294-1295.
• Stefan Koldehoff: When myth seems stronger than scholarship: Van Gogh and the problem of authenticity. In: Van Gogh Museum Journal. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 2002, pp. 8–25 ( robscholtemuseum.nl ).
• Stefan Koldehoff: Van Gogh Myth and Reality. DuMont, Cologne 2003.
• Michael Voigt (Ed.): Catalog of the special exhibition Hans Wacker-Elsen from November 20 to December 18, 2004 in the Galerie Arkadenhof. Löbau / Neusalza-Spremberg 2004.
• Antje Hartmann, Anja Möller: Poster of the museum of the Havelländische painter colony. "Impressions from Wietkiekenberg ", Hans Wacker, 1868 Düsseldorf - 1958 Ferch. 2006.
• Catalog of the exhibition Hans Wacker - 1868 (Düsseldorf) to 1958 (Ferch) - A life for art . On the 140th birthday and 50th anniversary of the painter's death from March 18 to April 1, 2008 in the city museum of the state capital Düsseldorf.
• Klaus Köstner, Michael Voigt (eds.): Catalog of the exhibition Hans Wacker = Jan Tenhagen = Vincent van Gogh? - A painter's life's work from November 9th to 30th, 2012 in the historical Badhaus Kulmbach.
• Klaus Köstner, Michael Voigt (Hrsg.): Catalog of the exhibition Hans Wacker-Elsen - German painter, 1868–1958 - Sea and port pictures / portraits from the collections of Klaus Köstner and Michael Voigt from June 21 to August 31, 2014 in Bad Lobenstein regional museum.
• Michael Voigt: Leaflet for the exhibition Hans Wacker-Elsen, 1868–1958 - Michael Voigt Collection from September 9 to November 5, 2017 in the East Saxon Art Gallery in Pulsnitz.
• Michael Voigt: Leaflet for the exhibition Hans Wacker-Elsen, German painter 1868–1958 - From the Michael Voigt collection from September 13 to October 31, 2019 in the “Reiterhaus” monument and museum in Neusalza-Spremberg.