Louis Seel

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Louis Seel (born April 25, 1881 in Wiesbaden , † 1958 ibid) was a Wiesbaden painter of classical modernism .

life and work

The artistic beginnings

Seel was the artistically ambitious son of a wealthy building contractor. He completed his school education in Switzerland. Before 1900, Seel worked in an architects' office in Wiesbaden. Various hand drawings have survived from that time, e.g. B. on the architecture of the Nassau court , but also vedute , z. B. the Schiersteiner Hafen . In 1901 he began studying painting at the art academy in Karlsruhe. For the sake of his father, he also studied architecture there. He then attended the Städelsche Kunstakademie in Frankfurt.

Paris, 1905-1914

Seel was in Paris from 1905 and lived in the same house in which Henri Matisse kept his studio. He associated with Pierre Bonnard , Marie Laurencin and the artists of the Café du Dôme . In those years his painting followed the style of the Gauguin School of Pont-Aven with bright colors .

Spain, 1914-1919

Francophile- minded, Seel withdrew hastily to Spain when the First World War broke out and left behind most of the work he had done in France in Paris. His melancholy “self-portrait with palette” from 1914 in the Wiesbaden Museum testifies, in subdued colors, to a gloom that is characteristic of all expressionist painters of that time. Shortly afterwards came back colorful images with abstract forms, which clearly the Orphism of Delaunay follow.

South of France, 1919–1939

After the end of the war, Seel returned to Paris for a short time in 1919 and found not a single one of the pictures he had left there. He then turned his back on the French metropolis and went to the south of France, where he initially lived in different places. From Villeneuve-lès-Avignon z. B. obtained a view of the city, where Seel chose a position that Corot had already taken in 1836 to paint a view of the Rhone town . Eventually he settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence for twenty years . At first he lived there in an "artists' home". Characteristic of his pictures, which were created there, are subdued colors and simplifying or abstracting forms.

Wiesbaden

The reason for returning to Germany with his wife from the French Pyrenees in 1939 was probably that when the Second World War broke out , Seel had to fear that as a German he might be sent to an internment camp in France . He hastily stretched his canvases from the stretcher and transported - as many as possible - rolled to his hometown in Wiesbaden. After the death of his wife in 1946, he lived modestly and withdrawn in Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring 60 and only rarely painted. When Seel died in 1958, he was buried in the north cemetery.

literature

Wilma Weidmann, representative of French painting culture, memories of Louis Seel - Parisian circle around Matisse - stay in Spain (part I), Wiesbadener Leben, vol. 44, 2/95, p. 8 ff

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vf, hand drawings by Louis Seel as a gift for Wiesbaden's Museum, Wiesbadener Kurier, 16./17. July 1983
  2. ^ Christian Graf Kageneck, Pictures for an Exhibition, The estate of the Wiesbaden artist Louis Seel is shrinking, Wiesbadener Tagblatt, April 6, 1983
  3. ^ Ce, Louis See zum Gedenken, Wiesbadener Tagblatt, April 23, 1966
  4. ↑ Wilma Weidmann, representative of French painting culture, classification of the painter Louis Seel in the art movements of his time - appreciation (part III), Wiesbadener Leben, vol. 44, 5/95, p. 26
  5. ↑ Wilma Weidmann, representative of French painting culture, classification of the painter Louis Seel in the art movements of his time - appreciation (part IV), Wiesbadener Leben, vol. 44, 6/95, p. 30
  6. ↑ Wilma Weidmann, Memories of Louis Seel, review of his pictures. A selection (part I), Wiesbadener Leben, vol. 44, 11/95, p. 26
  7. ↑ Wilma Weidmann, memories of Louis Seel, orders for portraits, Karges Leben und Verlöschen (Part II), Wiesbadener Leben, vol. 44, 3/95, p. 34
personal data
SURNAME Seel, Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH 1958
Place of death Wiesbaden