Léo Maillet

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Léo Maillet (born March 29, 1902 in Frankfurt am Main ; † March 8, 1990 in Bellinzona ; actually Leopold Mayer , also Théophile Maillet ) was a German-Swiss painter and etcher who mainly worked in exile . From 1950 to 1952 he was co-editor (with Adolf Hürlimann) of the Swiss art magazine Matière. In 1968 he accepted the Swiss citizenship of Molinazzo di Monteggio. He is considered an important Beckmann student.

Life

His mother Elisabetha (Betti), b. Nathan, came from an old Gau-Algesheim family. During the Second World War, as part of the National Socialist deportations, she was assigned to Quintusgasse in Frankfurt and transported to the Baltic States with 922 other Jews in cattle wagons to be shot. His father Eduard died in 1932.

Leopold Mayer finished school in 1915 at the Philanthropin , one of the most important Jewish schools in Frankfurt, and then received painting lessons from the watercolorist Fay from Vienna . In 1918 he began an apprenticeship in banking and business in a Frankfurt fashion house, Sigmund Strauss (Spitzenstrauss). In the same building a gallery, art salon Schames, exhibitions of contemporary painters like Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Heinrich Campendonc and others were organized. From 1920 he worked in his father's hat fashion business. In 1923 he began training at the Städelschule in Frankfurt in the graphics class of Professor Franz Karl Delavilla with the aim of becoming a fashion draftsman. During this time he made about 30 etchings. From trips to Switzerland, art travel reports by him with his own illustrations have appeared in various newspapers. Max Beckmann accepted him in his master class in 1930. After the National Socialists came to power, the Beckmann School was dissolved and all of his works were destroyed. In 1934 he had to give up his studio on Krögerstrasse in Frankfurt. He came to Paris via stations in Luxembourg and Vanves . There he worked in the same workshop as Picasso and Miró and etched for Othon de Frieß, among others.

In 1938 he married the fashion illustrator Margarete Hoeß, who had emigrated to France with him. This marriage ended in divorce in Switzerland in 1945. For internment , Mayer was taken to a camp in Villerbon ( Loir-et-Cher ) in central France. Via a voluntary report for service in the prestate troops, he came to an English work company in St. Nazaire .

After his wife was first sent to the French internment camp in Gurs in 1940 , they both received permission to settle in St. Remy de Provence . In 1942 the Vichy gendarmerie arrested him and handed him over to the Germans. During the deportation from Rivesaltes he was able to escape. He lost his left eye in the process. He took the name Théophile Maillet and signed his pictures with Th.M. In 1944 Mayer / Maillet managed to flee to Switzerland . There he was interned in Montreux and Tschiertschen in Graubünden . After the war he was in Basel and Lausanne four years stage design and typography u. a. study with Professor Ernst Ruder. In 1945 he turned to Kafkathemes in his prints . In 1952/53 he edited the art magazine matière with Adolf Hürlimann in Zurich .

In 1956 he married a second time, Regina Lippl, whose father was the artistic director of the Munich Residenztheater. From this marriage two sons were born (Nikolaus and Daniel).

Two restitution trials in France and Germany ended successfully after several years.

plant

Oil paintings, graphics, drawings, watercolors, material collages, Kafka illustrations (woodcuts and etchings).

After 1923 he learned the techniques of woodcut, etching, copper engraving and aquatint. Max Beckmann student, master class.

From 1936 to 1939 he took part in several art exhibitions in Paris.

In 1943 the Gestapo vacated his studio in Paris and destroyed almost all of his work with the works since 1926. A portfolio with 30 etchings was saved by chance. Hundreds of processed copper plates, some of which were printed, were lost along with many wooden sticks, lithographs and, above all, drawings. The expert for the compensation process, Professor Möhle, director of the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin , stated in a positive report, among other things: very independent and personal! When Maillet was explicitly asked whether he was beckmännisch , Möhle said: “ You are unknown and have lost everything, but you are among the five greatest painters and etchers of this era, like Beckmann, Dix, Dr. Grosz, Hofer from 1925 to 1933. "

Gabriele Mendelssohn, on the occasion of the Maillet exhibition in November 1994 in Gau-Algesheim: “ The threat to his existence is reflected in his pictures: the paintings can be stylistically assigned to Expressionism , New Objectivity and, in part, Surrealism . The development was, like that of many of his colleagues of the same age, abruptly interrupted at a point in time when he was just about to find his way as a young man. In his emigration the connection to the current art scene was lost more and more. After the war, he hardly made any contact with his professional colleagues. "

Movie

Publication participation

  • Exposition Maitre de la femme , Galerie Studio, Ostend, 1934
  • Large art exhibition , Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1969
  • Kafka in Art , Wolfgang Rothe, Belser Verlag, Stuttgart, 1979
  • Max Beckmann's Frankfurt pupil 1925-1933 , Carmelite Monastery, Frankfurt / Main, 1980
  • Resistance instead of adaptation , Elefanten Press Verlag, Berlin, 1980
  • Art of the Holocaust , The Routledge Press, Washington, 1981
  • The modern woodcut in Switzerland , E. Korrazijn M., Limmat Verlag, Zurich, 1987
  • Artists in Exile , edition text + kritik, Munich, 1992
  • Expressive realism , Dr. Rainer Zimmermann, Hirmer Verlag, Munich, 1994
  • Four Frankfurt artists in resistance , Paulskirche, Frankfurt / Main, 1995
  • Artists in Les Milles , German-speaking visual artists in the internment and deportation camp Les Milles 1939–1942, Angelika Gausmann, Verlag Ch. Mölmann, Paderborn, 1995.

literature

  • Lara Calderari: Léo Maillet. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 7, 2008 , accessed January 28, 2020 .
  • Friedrich Hagen: Leo Maillet, etcher and painter . Paris / V. 68 pp., 1966.
  • Marlene Decker-Janssen: An afterthought, an artist in exile . Benteli Verlag, Bern 1986.
  • Museo d'Arte Mendrisio: Leo Maillet, review . Switzerland, 1989.
  • Luciana Tabarroni: Leo Maillet . Galleria Stamparte, Bologna, Italy 1990.
  • Leo Maillet: Pictures, sketches and notes by a Frankfurt painter . Erasmus-Mainz publishing house, Mainz 1994.
  • Scuderia di Palazzo Moroni: Leo Maillet, una vita nella grafica . Padova, Italy 2004.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Constanze Neuendorf-Müller: Franz Carl Delavilla (1884-1967), painter, graphic artist, craftsman and set designer . Diss. 1998. Both spellings of the first name Karl can be found. Ref. Inserted here in case anyone wants to edit this man
  2. ↑ Issue 1 edited by Hürlimann, from Issue 2 publisher and editor Léo Maillet. Numbers 1 (summer 1952), 2 (autumn 1952), 3 (winter 1952/53) and 4 (spring 1953) were published. Each booklet had 16 pages.
personal data
SURNAME Maillet, Léo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mayer, Leopold; Maillet, Théophile
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss painter and etcher
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1990
Place of death Bellinzona