Henri Bacher

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Henri Bacher, Self-Portrait in Front of a Lorraine Landscape (1924)

Henri Bacher (born July 4, 1890 in Saargemünd , Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine , † February 15, 1934 in Strasbourg , department Bas-Rhin ) was a German-Lorraine painter and graphic artist .

Life

Bacher's father, the policeman Heinrich Bacher, came from Niederbronn in Alsace , his mother Maria-Margaretha nee. Hellé from near Sarreguemines. She was Catholic, her father a Protestant. Henri was baptized Lutheran ; in his religiosity and his work he was shaped by both denominations.

In 1891 the father was transferred to Strasbourg. Henri spent his childhood and youth there and received his schooling. He regularly spent the holidays with his maternal grandparents in Püttlingen .

Even as a schoolboy he developed his talent for drawing, but at his father's request he initially pursued an administrative career until he gave in to the insistence of art professor Georg Daubner , Pastor Stocker, who taught Henri in French, and his mother in 1913. Henri enrolled at the Strasbourg School of Applied Arts, where he had attended courses since 1911.

In addition to Daubner, he was shaped by Karl Jordan and Joseph Sattler . This introduced him to the small-format genre of bookplates , which was to become a main branch of his work.

At the First World War Bacher took part on the German side. His artistic talent was put into the service of propaganda by the army command. The first series of works appeared in print. Towards the end of the war he was wounded in the Baltic States .

After an - incomplete - recovery, he went to study in Paris , where he earned his living copying classic works of art and made the acquaintance of Henri Le Sidaner . He then traveled to Rome (1919-1921), where he pretended to be a Dominican for lack of funds and took hospital hospitality until he was seen through. He created a large number of drawings and watercolors and won the Dominican professor Joachim Joseph Berthier (1848–1924) as inspiration and advisor.

After his return he gained more and more recognition. He set up a studio in the La Robertsau district of Strasbourg , which he designed like a private band, and presented his works at regional art exhibitions. However, his only personal exhibition in 1922 was a failure, as his landscape painting was criticized as "lukewarm". Still, he continued to tour and sketch the home region. He received illustration orders for historical and descriptive books about the region. A booklet with cemetery drawings entitled Requiem aeternam was a great success. In 1932 the band Goethe followed in Alsace . As early as the 1920s he began to illustrate Louis Pinck's three-volume work Verklingende Weisen - Lothringer Volkslieder , a major commission that kept him busy until his death.

In 1933 he married Gretel Huber from Hagenau . In the same year he received an order from Strasbourg Bishop Charles Ruch to paint the pilgrims' chapel on Mount Odile. However, since his war wound became infected in his right thigh, he had to undergo several operations in the hospital. He refused an amputation and died in February 1934 at the age of 43 of sepsis . He was buried in the Strasbourg West Cemetery.

Bacher's style was folksy and based on classical models, but at the same time, especially in his ex-libris, original in the condensation of the motifs and never kitsch.

Web links

Commons : Henri Bacher  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ alsace-collections.fr states “Ash Wednesday, February 15, 1934”; However, Ash Wednesday was February 14th.
  2. ↑ A street there is named after him today, as well as in Saargemünd and in Reichshoffen .
personal data
SURNAME Bacher, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Lorraine painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Saargemünd , Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1934
Place of death Strasbourg , Bas-Rhin department