Karl Ewald Olszewski

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Karl Ewald Olszewski (born January 25, 1884 in Chernivtsi ; then Austria-Hungary , now Ukraine ; † February 24, 1965 in Munich ) was a German painter .

life and work

Karl Ewald Olszewski (read: Olschewski) was the thirteenth of fourteen children. His father Karl was a respected master craftsman who had first learned the trade of a blacksmith and later made old Austrian stagecoaches in his large workshop, which he also painted with various regional coats of arms and landscapes. Before Karl Ewald was born, the family lived in Wiznitz in Bukovina , 80 kilometers west of Chernivtsi on the Czeremosch River, where his father was also mayor.

Painting the stagecoaches certainly has a formative positive influence on the growing boy. The largest share in his artistic development, however, had his brother Anton Olszewski, who was 20 years older than him, and who also wanted to become a painter, but then took up the career of a forest official. He recognized his brother's artistic disposition for drawing and painting early on and encouraged him in every possible way.

He first made it possible for him to study at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and brought him to Munich in 1904 , where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with professors Ludwig von Herterich and Hugo von Habermann . This training was followed by further studies in Paris . In his early days, i.e. even before visiting the academy in Munich, Karl Ewald devoted himself particularly to Bukowinian motifs, worked for Simplicissimus and occupied himself with portrait painting, with his mother Karoline (née Kandl) and his niece Margarethe Lehner, née Olszewski (daughter of brother Anton Olszewski) were preferred models.

The reason that Olszewski was remembered primarily as a “bird painter” is due to a decision that he himself described as follows:

“I became a painter. When I moved my field of work north, I came to Mecklenburg for the first time . The infinite plain with its gentle hills, with its wonderful air moods, its thousand lakes and, last but not least, with its wonderful Baltic Sea coast put me in a quiet enthusiasm. And the beauty of Mecklenburg grabbed the strings of my memory like a delicate hand and set my soul vibrating. Since then I have yearned for the moment when I, like the migratory bird, can move north again, to stay there for months, to do my studies there for my pictures, to recover from the bustle of the big city and myself to enjoy the quiet beauty of this divinely blessed piece of earth. "

Karl Ewald Olszewski liked to stay on the Fischland-Darß peninsula , which lies on the southern Baltic coast near the town of Ribnitz-Damgarten . Here he was able to fully develop his love for animals and nature from his earliest childhood. Here he found diverse landscapes, populated with storks, white-tailed eagles and swamp snipes, mute swans and wild geese, gulls and herons, ducks and crows, which now became his exclusive motifs. In order to record the life of these birds, their behavior and their manifestations in the totality of all essential and typically visible characteristics, he spent a few months a year at the Baltic Sea for thirty years. What he observed, studied, felt and sketched there is reflected in his pictures. It is the perfect harmony in the interplay of air, water, earth and light with the feathered creatures. His style is so distinctive and characteristic, his painterly brushwork so pronounced that he cannot be confused with any other painter.

But he also knew the value of satire . When Struwwelpeter appeared in London on October 1, 1914, as "Swollen-headed William", an extremely successful English-language parody, which had three editions within a week, but which concealed heavy anti-German war propaganda, Germany reacted in the same way: So appeared 1915 Karl Ewald Olszewski's “War-Struwwelpeter”. On a total of 24 pages, the Entente powers became the subject of caricature and mocking verses. Today this volume is a sought-after collector's item.

The successes were not lacking. In Munich Glass Palace and many other exhibitions work Olszewskis were represented. The Munich-based Hanfstaengl-Verlag, in particular, has made a major contribution to the worldwide distribution of Olszewski's pictures with its color light prints. In the early 1930s, the Royal Society for Art in London appointed Karl Ewald Olszewski as a member ("Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts") in recognition of his artistic work.

Karl Ewald Olszewski was awarded a gold art medal at the international hunting exhibitions both in Berlin in 1937 and in Düsseldorf in 1954. He was particularly fond of watercolor painting , which had given him his big breakthrough. Painting in oil, etching and pencil drawing were not neglected, but took a back seat.

Karl Ewald Olszewski was active in many artists' associations. Renowned galleries have acquired his pictures. The Städtische Galerie in Munich , the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and the Staatliches Museum Schwerin have works by him.

Olszewski was well suffered by the National Socialists. Pictures of him were published in the art magazine Kunst dem Volk , published by Hitler's confidante and photographer Heinrich Hoffmann . For Adolf Hitler, Olszewski took over the furnishing of several rooms on his yacht Aviso Grille . His picture “With Wind and Clouds” hung in the ship's saloon; today it is privately owned.

Karl Ewald Olszewski was married to the opera singer Lite Thomasius-Olszewski from Alsace . From this marriage came the daughter Yvonne and the son Reinhold Kurt Olszewski, who was the initiator, director, actor and organizer of the "Deutsche Kammerspiele", which had its headquarters first in Santiago de Chile , later in Buenos Aires and under his direction as one became the leading German cultural institution in South America.

Works (selection)

  • Wild geese in the coming storm. Oil on cardboard [73.5 × 103 cm], added to the holdings of the Städtische Galerie in Munich in 1939
  • The sea eagle is coming. Watercolor [35.5 × 48.5 cm]; Municipal gallery in Munich, acquired in 1929 in the Glaspalast
  • Invading curlews. Oil on canvas [36.5 × 49.2 cm]; Bavarian State Painting Collections
  • Sea shore with 14 flying wild geese. Oil on canvas; State Museum Schwerin
  • With wind and clouds. Privately owned

literature

  • Reinhold Czarny: Human images of a bird painter. In: Czernowitzer Kleine Schriften , Heft 21, Innsbruck 2008
  • Hans Prelitsch: A master of animal painting. In: Der Südostdeutsche , No. 2/1954, p. 3
  • Mecklenburgische Monatshefte , 11th year 1935, issue 8, p. 425
  • Karl Ewald Olszewski: The War-Struwwelpeter. Holbein-Verlag, Munich 1915

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So the picture "Wild geese in the coming storm" in No. 6/1943.
  2. ^ Mortimer G. Davidson: Art in Germany 1933–1945, Volume II / 1, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-87847-095-9, p. 12
personal data
SURNAME Olszewski, Karl Ewald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Chernivtsi
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1965
Place of death Munich