Karl Lenz (painter)

Karl Lenz (born July 15, 1898 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 1, 1948 there ) was a German painter.

Life

Lenz first attended the arts and crafts school in Frankfurt and made the acquaintance of the Frankfurt painters Wilhelm Altheim and Fritz Boehle . In 1916 he moved to the Städelsche Kunstinstitut and also took lessons in Bernhard Mannfeld's etching class . During the First World War he served as a medic, in 1919 he became a delegate of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Düsseldorf. In 1921 he was accepted at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and became a master student of Julius Paul Junghanns . In 1923, after his marriage to the miller's daughter Berta Weigand, Lenz settled in Erdhausen , his father's home village, and set up a house with a studio. You can still see his pictures in the Künstlerhaus Lenz restaurant in Gladenbach .

In his pictures in the following years he described the landscape and the life and customs of the farmers in the so-called Hessian hinterland. He made contact with Carl Bantzer and the Willingshausen painters' colony and visited the Catholic village of Mardorf , where he created several paintings of the picturesque Marburg Catholic women's costume for a scientific work on folklore.

Lenz lived in modest economic circumstances. On March 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP and was subsequently promoted by the NS District Administrator Hans Krawielitzki . He received portrait commissions from Marburg professors such as Rudolf Klapp and in 1935 a solo exhibition in the university museum. In 1938 Lenz was presented with the Kurhessian Culture Prize of the NS-Gau Kurhessen .

Between 1937 and 1942 Lenz took part with a total of twelve of these motifs: Hessian landscapes and depictions of peasants under the influence of Impressionism, as well as folklore studies in the Great German Art Exhibitions in Munich, which presented the art of National Socialism as propaganda shows. A favorite motif of the artist Winter in Erdhausen , which was exhibited in room 18 in 1939, was acquired by Adolf Hitler . Today it is owned by the Karl Lenz Foundation. Other titles included Winterlandschaft (1937), Erdhausen im Sommer (1938), The Family (1940) and Schwälmerin (1942).

literature

• Ursula Glöckner-Will: Karl Lenz (1898–1948). Marburg 1999.
• Mathilde Hain: The life picture of an Upper Hessian traditional village - of rural costume and community. Jena 1936.
• Otmar Schick: Karl Lenz, Mathilde Hain and Mardorf in pictures and texts from around 1935 , Mardorfer Village History Working Group, 2018
• Hessian Painters - Karl Lenz (1898–1948) - Ten color reproductions with an accompanying text by Bernd Küster . Jonas, Marburg 1985 ISBN 3-922561-32-2
• Albrecht Kippenberger (text). Karl Lenz the Hessian peasant painter , Künstlerhaus Lenz, Erdhausen, circa 1950.
• Karl Lenz . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 212 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Lenz, Karl . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Saur, Munich 1992 ff.
2. ↑ Bernd Lindenthal: Painter Karl Lenz appreciated the Schwalm - and also the Nazi regime . In: Hessische / Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA) from April 29, 2011
3. ↑ Marie Schmidt: The "Great German Art Exhibition 1937 in the House of German Art in Munich" , dissertation to obtain a doctorate in philosophy, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, p. 569
4. ↑ From 1946 the exhibits stored in the depot as well as the numerous acquisitions by Adolf Hitler and the former German Reich were moved to the "Central Collecting Point" in the former "Administration Building" (today: House of Cultural Institutes) and "Führerbau" (today: University of Music and Theater) and could be bought by the painters or heirs from the end of the 1960s.