Hermann Troeltsch

Hermann Troeltsch (born August 20, 1886 in Kempten ; † March 2, 1943 there ) was a German painter and draftsman .

Life

Hermann Troeltsch was born in Kempten in 1886 . He was related to the Allgäu patrician family von Jenisch and grew up in an upper-class family. His father, Heinrich Troeltsch, ran the Kempten branch of the Bavarian Central Bank. His mother, Josephine (née Sandholz), was the daughter of a Kempten factory owner. Even in his childhood and youth, Hermann made numerous sketches and showed an extraordinary artistic talent.

At the insistence of his father in 1905, after graduating from high school in Kempten, he initially began studying architecture at the Technical University of Dresden . Hermann convinced his father, also through his mother's intercession, that he could study painting. He broke off his studies in Dresden and switched to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich .

During the First World War , Troeltsch was stationed as a soldier on the Western Front in France for three and a half years. He returned in December 1918 and continued his studies by touring Tyrol, Italy, Corsica and Greece and settling in various places in the south as a freelance painter. Often he was accompanied by his mother on these stages in his life, who always advised and supported him in his work. He even spent a year - from 1926 to 1927 - in Argentina, where he visited his friend Anton Weiß. Hermann Troeltsch had his studio in Munich. The painter was a member of the Reich Association of German Artists and the Munich Artists' Cooperative.

For the last seven years of his life Troeltsch was almost blind and had to give up painting. Probably both a kidney disease in France and the constant handling of corrosive substances when making etchings had contributed to his blindness. Hermann Troeltsch died in 1943 at the age of 57 in his hometown of Kempten.

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Hermann Troeltsch created an extensive body of work using a variety of artistic techniques. He drew, painted oil paintings and watercolors , but also worked intensively with etchings . Troeltsch often devoted himself to portraits , but also made people at work and in everyday situations as well as numerous landscapes his subject. Troeltsch's work is difficult to assign to one of the movements of Classical Modernism , as it is sometimes expressionistic , then impressionistic or even Art Nouveau. His oil paintings are characterized by a monumental formal language and linear clarity. The studies in the south also brought strong colors to his painting. His drawings, on the other hand, show mostly delicate natural romanticism.

Exhibitions

Despite the large scope of his work, Troeltsch did not go public. He only took part in four exhibitions with some of his oil paintings and watercolors: the Glass Palace Exhibition in Munich 1928/29, the Munich Art Exhibition in the Deutsches Museum in 1932, the Glass Palace Exhibition in 1934 and the Great Munich Art Exhibition in 1936.

A large part of the works of art stored in the graphic institute were destroyed by a bomb attack. In 1948 an "Exhibition of works by Allgäu painters of the 19th century" took place in the Allgäu local history museum. This commemorative exhibition on the work of the Kempten painter showed a few paintings and drawings by Adolf Hengeler and Georg Sauter, and fifty drawings, watercolors and oil paintings by Hermann Troeltsch.

Today the collections of the museums of the city of Kempten contain works by the artist, including oil paintings, watercolors, etchings as well as pencil, ink and red chalk drawings.