Heinz Kistler
Heinz Kistler (born July 1, 1912 in Berlin ; † November 4, 2004 in Bad Kissingen ) was a German landscape painter . He was called the "Painter of the Rhön " .
Life
Kistler was the son of a successful Kapellmeister who had died in World War I and the grandson of the composer Cyrill Kistler . Mother and son moved back to their actual hometown Bad Kissingen in 1917 after their husband and father died. Even here in his school days, Kistler's artistic inclinations in drawing and painting were evident.
After an apprenticeship as a painter in Bad Kissingen, he went to Munich to attend the master school for German painting . From 1932 Kistler attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, first with Josef Hillerbrand , and later with Julius Diez . When Diez had to give way to Nazi cultural ideology in 1939 , Kistler, like most Diez students, demonstratively left the academy.
During the Second World War , which Kistler spent mostly as a frontline soldier in Russia , he created numerous expressive pictures of the "war". When the German army withdrew from Russia, however, over 100 studies and sketches were lost, according to their own statement. After being a prisoner of war, Kistler returned to Bad Kissingen and lived there until his death. In these more than five decades he earned the nickname "Painter of the Rhön" with his landscape painting .
Artistic creation
Kistler not only saw the Rhön with “new” eyes, but also took its appearance out of the tight, ornate frame that the romanticizing “Heimatmalerei” had given it. He painted the Rhön in the style of Expressionism and gave it back its natural strength. On study trips to Sweden , Italy and Iceland , Kistler repeatedly recreated the world from his inner perspective. Heiner Dikreiter (1893–1966), director of the Städtische Galerie Würzburg, once described Kistler in one sentence: “The pictures of this painter are real, true and healthy statements of a mature male art that will still be alive when much of what is today is noisily placed on the ramp has long been forgotten. "
Exhibitions
Kistler had solo exhibitions or participated in joint exhibitions in German cities such as Munich, Berlin, Dresden , Chemnitz , Ulm , Würzburg , Coburg , Bad Kissingen, Schweinfurt , Cologne and Fulda , but also in other European countries such as Vienna and Stockholm .
A permanent exhibition entitled Elementary Landscape can be seen in the Bad Kissingen district office . These exhibits were given to the Bad Kissingen district as a gift in 2002 on the condition that they were presented there for 25 years.
Kistler's paintings were purchased by the State Graphic Collections Munich , the Municipal Gallery in Munich , the Graphic Collection Mannheim , the Municipal Gallery Würzburg, the Municipal Collection Fulda, the Municipal Collection Schweinfurt, the Walraff-Richartz Museum Cologne , the Pallavicini Collection in Buenos Aires and the Kyoichiro Nitta Collection in Tokyo .
In 2012, the city of Bad Kissingen paid tribute to Heinz Kistler's work on the occasion of his 100th birthday with several exhibitions and events.
Web links
- Literature by and about Heinz Kistler in the catalog of the German National Library
- Official homepage with biography
- Biography on websites Bad Kissingen
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kistler, Heinz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German landscape painter; "Painter of the Rhön" |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 1, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 4, 2004 |
| Place of death | Bad Kissingen |