Jan Verkade

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Self-portrait (around 1894)
Paysanne de St. Nolff (1892)
Jan Verkade painting under a tree by Richard Roland Holst (1891)
Jan Verkade (1912)

Jan Verkade , mostly Willibrord Verkade OSB , (born September 18, 1868 in Zaandam ; died July 19, 1946 in Beuron ) was a Dutch painter and Benedictine .

Life

Artist contacts in Paris

After dropping out of his studies at the Academy in Amsterdam , Verkade went to Paris in 1891 , where he met Paul Gauguin and Paul Sérusier and got in close contact with the artist group Nabis , which he joined in 1891. Because of his height, he was nicknamed "Nabi obélical" by the group .

Beuron Monastery

After growing interest in the Catholic Church, Verkade, who came from a Mennonite family, was baptized on August 26, 1892 in the Jesuit college . In 1894 he entered the Benedictine Archabbey of Beuron in Hohenzollern (today part of Baden-Württemberg) as a novice and received the name of the Frisian apostle Willibrord . In 1902 he was ordained a priest . In Beuron, he worked from now on in the Beuron art school , which he also led in the meantime.

Verkade and the Munich art scene

In February 1907 Verkade met Alexej Jawlensky for the first time , who remembered: "In an exhibition at the Kunstverein in Munich I met [...] Father Willibrord Verkade from the Beuron Abbey." It was an exhibition by the painter Curt Herrmann , about which the Münchner Neues Nachrichten reported on February 19, 1907. Verkade describes that in Munich he got “a deeper insight into the problem of form and the works of the Italian early Renaissance from the painter Hugo Troendle [...] The acquaintance with the Russian Alexej Jawlensky [. ..] ". Verkade continues: “I was not a little surprised when I stood in Jawlensky's spacious studio on Giselastrasse the following Sunday. On one wall hung a series of very colorful landscapes and still lifes, which showed a strong temperament. Like-minded people, we immediately became friends and had a lot of fun together. "

Jawlensky describes in his memoirs: “Verkade also painted nudes in my studio . When he returned to the monastery, he had to confess everything to his prior , and since he had painted nudes, he had to go to Jerusalem as a penance to paint a church. He was not allowed to shave, so that after a year when he drove through Munich and rang my bell, he appeared with a long beard. Unfortunately, he was only with me for half an hour. I've never seen him since then. "

Verkade's signatures

Verkade used to sign his pictures and drawings differently, e.g. B. in capital letters by combining first and last name, which he occasionally separated or just signed with “JAN.”, But upper and lower case letters are also used in cursive. A special feature of Verkade's oeuvre are the paintings that he signed with his pseudonym “Langejan” - long Jan based on his Nabi artist name “Nabi obéliscal”. It should be mentioned that he also used his pseudonym "Langejan" as a writer.

plant

Verkade's works are in public museums in France and Sweden. Independent wall works are preserved in the Catholic churches of Aichhalden and Heiligenbronn as well as in Vienna. Verkade was also depicted several times by other painters, such as Richard Roland Holst (1891) and Rudolf Heinisch (1946).

Autobiographical works

Verkade published several works of German and Flemish mysticism ( Gertrudenbuch , From the Book of the Twelve Beghines , Jan van Ruysbroek Die Zierde der Spiritual Hochzeit und others), where he also did the translation.

His autobiographical works have been published several times, and the Unrest to God has also been translated into Hungarian and Polish.

He was one of the closest friends of the cultural journalists Hermann Bahr in his Catholic phase (1912-1934), who also published several times on Verkade. The correspondence between the two has not yet been evaluated by research.

Fonts

St. Martin by Jan Verkade, wall painting in the Beuron monastery
  • The unrest to God. Memories of a painter-monk. Herder, Freiburg 1920.
  • Jan van Ruysbroek : The ornament of the spiritual wedding . Translated from Flemish by Willibrord Verkade. Matthias Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 1922.
  • The drive to perfection: memories of a painter monk. Herder, Freiburg 1931.
  • Traces of existence. Findings of the painter monk Willibrord Verkade OSB Matthias Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 1938.
  • The new Gertrudenbuch . Beuroner Kunstverlag, Beuron 2nd edition 1956.

literature

  • Hermann Bahr: The unrest towards God. In: Hochland 17 (1920) # 11 (August), 530-535. Book edition as "Verkade" in: Bilderbuch. Vienna, Leipzig: Wila Wiener Literarisches Anstalt 1921, pp. 131–141.
  • Hermann Bahr: painter monk . In: Vossische Zeitung , No. 303 (morning edition), Friday, June 18, 1920.
  • Caroline Boyle-Turner: Jan Verkade, a Dutch student of Gauguin , Städtische Galerie Albstadt 1989
  • Jörg Metzinger:  Jan Verkade. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 12, Bautz, Herzberg 1997, ISBN 3-88309-068-9 , Sp. 1259-1261.
  • Adolf Smitmans (ed.): P. Willibrord Verkade, artist and monk. Exhibition catalog Kunststiftung Hohenkarpfen, Beuron 2007.
  • Hubert Krins: Jan Verkade. In: Maria Magdalena Rückert (Ed.): Württembergische biographies including Hohenzollern personalities. Volume II. On behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-17-021530-6 , pp. 294-295 ( digitized version ).
  • Jessica Petraccaro-Goertsches: Jan Verkade alias Pater Willibrord. The Munich student days of a Beuron artist monk. In: Voices of the Time 140, 2015, pp. 455–466.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Herrmann: The revue blanche and the Nabis. Dissertation Munich 1959, p. 202.
  2. Alexej Jawlensky: Memorabilia In: Clemens Weiler (ed.): Alexej Jawlensky, heads-faces-meditations. Hanau 1970, p. 110.
  3. ^ Curt Herrmann (1854-1929) , exhibition catalog Berlin Museum 1989, p. 259.
  4. Willibrord Verkade: The drive towards perfection, memories of a painter monk. Freiburg 1931, p. 169 f.
  5. Willibrord Verkade: The drive towards perfection, memories of a painter monk. Freiburg 1931, p. 170.
  6. ^ Adolf Smitmans (ed.): P. Willibrord Verkade, artist and monk. Exhib. Cat .: Hohenkarpfen Art Foundation, Beuron 2007, p. 118 color illustrations, cat. No. 7.13 and p. 119 color illustrations, cat. No. 7.13.
  7. Jessica Petraccaro: The visual artistic and literary late work of Father Willibrord Jan Verkade OSB. Master's thesis in art history, University of Karlsruhe (TH), 2008, p. 48, color illus. 45 and 46.
  8. Alexej Jawlensky: Memorabilia In: Clemens Weiler (ed.), Alexej Jawlensky, Heads-Face-Meditations Hanau 1970, p. 110.
  9. ^ Caroline Boyle-Turner: Jan Verkade, A Dutch student of Gauguin. Städtische Galerie Albstadt 1989, ill. Pp. 91, 108, 120, 128.
  10. Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky and his companions in a new light. Munich 2004, p. 97, fig. 107
  11. Langejan: A painter letter I. In: Christian art 7 (1910-11), pages 336-338.

Web links

Commons : Jan Verkade  - collection of images, videos and audio files