Heinz May

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Heinz May (* 1878 in Düsseldorf ; † 1954 there ) was a German painter . He belonged to the first generation of Rhenish expressionists .

Life

In Heinz May's studio: Bernhardine and Walter Ophey (left), Jupp Rübsam (inside frame), back right. Charlotte and Ernst Gottschalk , in front Ethie and Heinz May.
1926
Photo: RAK Bonn

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The white houses on Drakeplatz from left to right: Nos. 5 and 4 by the sculptor Albert Pehle

Heinz May studied from 1901 to 1909 at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Willy Spatz and became a master student of Claus Meyer . After studying at the academy, he was drawn to the anti-academic painters of the “ Sonderbund ” founded in 1909 , including Walter Ophey .

Ophey shared a studio with May in the house of the sculptor Albert Pehle , who was related by marriage to Ophey , at Drakeplatz 4 in Düsseldorf- Oberkassel . The studio house was taken over by Joseph Beuys in the 1960s . Until his death in 1930 he was a close friend of Ophey. Together they kept going out into nature to draw and watercolors .

In 1907 May had his first exhibition participation in the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast . In 1914 at the first exhibition, he was represented with designs for murals at the Cologne Werkbund exhibition . The gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim signed May 1914, and a promising career began, which was interrupted by the First World War. He did his military service from 1914 to 1918.

In 1919 May was one of the founding members of the artists' association Das Junge Rheinland . He also belonged to the so-called "Mother Ey" group, the circle of friends around the Düsseldorf art dealer Johanna Ey . Relations with one another have always been close since the artists' association was founded, so that in 1921 its office was moved to Johanna Ey's gallery. In 1923 May left the artist association “Das Junge Rheinland” with his friends Ernst Gottschalk , Jupp Rübsam and Walter Ophey in order to found the “Rheingruppe” with other colleagues around Adolf Uzarski . In 1928 he became a member of the "Rhenish Secession" and from 1932 to 1933 May was chairman of the same.

In 1925 May made a mural for the GeSoLei exhibition . The gusset hung in the "Rheinhalle", the multi-purpose hall and the planetarium of the GeSoLei , today Tonhalle Düsseldorf . There it can be seen today - in the same place - in the outer walkway of the foyer of the rotunda.

From 1933 May was by the Nazis to show ban occupied. He went into inner emigration and lived secluded in his studio on Bismarckstrasse 44, in the so-called “Getreidehaus”, in which the “Schlegelbrauerei”, a local pub of the National Socialists, was on the ground floor. “On July 11, 1933, Karl Schwesig was arrested by the SA and tortured in the 'grain house' of the Schlegel brewery on Bismarckstrasse [Düsseldorf] […]. The artists Heinz May, Ferdinand Macketanz and others live on the upper floors of the 'Getreidehaus' , while the SA has established itself in the basement, in what it calls the 'Schlegelkeller', in which the arrested are 'interrogated'. [...] "( Peter Barth : Johanna Ey und Ihr Künstlerkreis, 1984, p. 61.)

During the Second World War he stayed in the Black Forest, Lake Constance and Vorarlberg. In 1937 his pictures were confiscated and destroyed as " Degenerate Art " from the Düsseldorf Art Museum. His studio with over 100 paintings and countless watercolors was destroyed in a bomb attack on Düsseldorf in 1943 . His artistic life's work was destroyed.

After the end of the war, on December 22nd, 1945, Hella Nebelung opened her gallery with the exhibition "contemporary art" as a Düsseldorf gallery owner from the very beginning. This was dedicated to her artist friends. For some of them, like Heinz May, this presentation was like redress for a long exhibition ban. In 1946 and 1952, May had solo exhibitions in the Nebelung Gallery. In 1948 Heinz May had an exhibition in the Der Spiegel gallery in Cologne.

From 1949 to 1950 May took on a teaching position at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Study trips took him to Italy, Paris, Austria and Holland. He made his last trip to Spain in 1953.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Kraus: Walter Ophey 1882–1930. Life and work with a catalog raisonné of paintings and prints. Hatje, Stuttgart 1993, p. 15 and p. 42; here note 263.
  2. ^ Database on the confiscation inventory of the "Degenerate Art" campaign, "Degenerate Art" research center, FU Berlin.
  3. ^ Yvonne Friedrichs: Art with sociable culture. In: Rheinische Post. Düsseldorf arts section. June 10, 1982 ( wwwalt.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de ).
  4. ↑ Hella Nebelung Gallery. Chronology of the exhibitions. Central archive of the international art trade e. V., accessed May 19, 2015.
  5. ^ Daniela Wilmes: Competition for the modern. On the history of the art trade in Cologne after 1945. Akademie Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-005197-0 , pp. 205 and 420.
personal data
SURNAME May, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH 1954
Place of death Dusseldorf