Karl Demetz

Karl Demetz (born June 17, 1909 in Trossingen , † March 28, 1986 in Apfelstetten ) was a German landscape and animal painter from Swabia .

Career

Immediately after finishing school, Karl Demetz was sent to Stuttgart , where he began an apprenticeship with the renowned decorative painter Kämmerer from April 1923 - according to the documents of the city archive . Schultheiss Haller was personally committed to the young talent. By forming an association to promote the gifted , the training and further education in the Württemberg metropolis could be financed. From 1924 to 1929 he spent his apprenticeship with Richard Herdtle (1866–1943), who was a recognized animal and landscape painter in Stuttgart. From 1930 to 1933 Demetz attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart . His teachers were the professors Arnold Waldschmidt (1873-1956) and Hans Spiegel (1893-1966). Afterwards Demetz worked in Stuttgart as a graphic designer and freelance artist.

From 1940 to 1945 he was a soldier, then until 1949 in Yugoslav captivity. During this time, too, he was able to develop his artistic talent, as far as circumstances allowed. Even in Russia, where he spent most of his time as a soldier, he devoted himself to painting. His pictures from this time were shaped by the need and human fate, he painted and drew people in need and landscapes that impressed him. Pictures of the wintry Russian landscape were taken, of peaceful villages with wooden houses and the multi-towered church in the center, of soldiers with horses, Russian girls and children. And horse-drawn carriages and sleighs keep appearing - this is the picture Russian Winter , in which three single- horse horses cross the wintry landscape. An impressive work from that time is the painting Troika with the three horses charging towards the viewer. Here the animal painter Karl Demetz has shown the possibilities of expression available to him.

Four years after the end of the war (1949) he returned from captivity to his homeland. As a freelance painter, first in Trossingen, then in Nürtingen and Stuttgart, Demetz devoted himself artistically almost exclusively to the landscape and the animals. In Apfelstetten near Münsingen he built a studio that gave him a clear view of the Swabian Alb . Karl Demetz died on March 28, 1986 in Apfelstetten.

Museum Trossingen

Karl Demetz's works were held in high regard by art dealers and art lovers while he was still alive. His oeuvre encompasses a wide range of motifs and forms of expression. In the Museum Auberlehaus in Trossingen a comprehensive collection is kept of his works. However, this is mostly not accessible and is only shown in the context of special exhibitions. His works are still highly traded today - especially in the Swabian region.

style

Karl Demetz is best known as a landscape and animal painter , but his work covers a much wider spectrum. Stylistically, his pictures can be “assigned to a late impressionism and naturalism ”, but Demetz sometimes also showed an “expressive, impasto brushwork”. He was inspired by the landscape of the Swabian Alb, here was the habitat of the animals that he liked to paint: sheep, cows and horses. Back then, as draft animals, cows and horses were still associated with rural people on a daily basis. Rural life, the harmony of people, creatures and nature is artistically captured in Karl Demetz's pictures.

literature

• Dr. Robert Rapp (texts): Karl Demetz, life and work. In: Edition Ritzi: illustrated book , Trossingen 1988

credentials

1. ^ Museum Auberlehaus - Trossinger Heimatmuseum [1]
2. ↑ Gerhard and Ferdinand Messner in the illustrated book On the Traces of Art