Max Bergmann (painter)

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Max Bergmann (born December 2, 1884 in Fürstenberg , † October 17, 1955 in Haimhausen ) was a German painter of late German Impressionism . He is best known as an animal painter (cows, oxen), but he was also a portraitist , flower and still life painter .

Live and act

As the son of a master dyer, he soon showed his talent for drawing. He received his artistic training in Berlin and Munich. From 1902 to 1906 Bergmann studied at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg with Julius Ehrentraut and Konrad Böse . From 1906 to 1913 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . There he attended the nude painting class of Ludwig von Herterich and later the animal painting class of Heinrich von Zügel , whose master class he became in 1907. Bergmann spent the summer months in Wörth am Rhein with rein . In 1909/10 he studied in Paris, where he made friends with Marcel Duchamp , a friendship that left Bergmann's “... painting remarkably unscathed, but the two young artists enjoyed themselves splendidly with mutual trains through Parisian nights.” A return visit by Duchamp in Munich took place in June 1912. Further trips took Bergmann to northern France, Denmark, Norway, Austria and Hungary. From 1910, his works were exhibited in the Munich Glass Palace every year .

In 1912 Bergmann moved to Haimhausen, where a small artist colony , founded by Bernhard Buttersack , had developed. He bought Buttersack's villa with his wife's fortune and opened a private, state-recognized painting school in 1925, for which he built his own studio building on the property. His students included Hermann Koenemann , Hans Frey and the Brazilian painter Artur José Nísio . His technical virtuosity is regarded as remarkable, but his animal painting and the pictures of peasant life lacked the critical artistic position that goes beyond genre painting, as can be found in Wilhelm Leibl .

Between 1937 and 1944 he was regularly involved in the National Socialist propaganda show Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich, which was built for this purpose , and a total of 19 of his works were exhibited. Three of these works were acquired by Adolf Hitler : the painting Kälbchen in 1938 , Steaming Plaice in 1939 and Die Scholle in 1940 . The latter is now in the possession of the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

In August 1914 he married Dorothea Karstadt, a daughter from a wealthy commercial building. The painter Klaus Bergmann (1916–1956) emerged from the marriage. In Haimhausen and Wörth am Rhein, where he was made an honorary citizen in 1949, streets are named after Max Bergmann. As early as 1906, Bergmann spent numerous summer stays in Wörth, which was known as a painter's village for open-air painting thanks to the painters Hermann Baisch and von Zügel.

Listed Villa Max Bergmanns (formerly Villa Buttersack) in Haimhausen, studio side
Garden side of Bergmann's villa, where painting courses were held

Artistic work

Bergmann is assigned to the Dachau School both stylistically and spatially . Bergmann's best-known motifs include everyday rural scenes, with the focus on depicting cattle, often in combination with farm work. The transition from animal painting to genre painting is fluid. His nude painting, such as B. "Nude in the Atelier" (1931) is expressive and refers to the Parisian student days and his friendship and mutual inspiration with Marcel Duchamp . Many portraits and nudes as well as numerous sketches inspired by Expressionism are not open to the public. The few known sacred works (crucifixion motifs) are close to Expressionism in their force. Without the inclusion of this work, his oeuvre cannot be appreciated in the right light. Above all, the unknown, privately owned works testify to Bergmann's great creative power, with which he clearly emerged from the shadow of his teacher Zügel.

Bergmann preferred a light, luminous colorism and a patorose and broad brush application of paint as well as the open painterly form. As with his teacher Zügel, the animals in his paintings often come straight at the viewer from the depths of the picture .

exhibition

  • Villa Jauss Kunsthaus, Oberstdorf 2015 (with Franziskus Dellgrün)

Works (selection)

  • The floe , oil on canvas, 110 × 134 cm, German Historical Museum, Berlin

literature

  • Ottilie Thiemann-Stoedter: The Haimhausen painters' colony . In: Amperland 1974 / Jhg. 10, pp. 318-327
  • Wilhelm Weber: Max Bergmann - Life and Work . Landau 1984
  • Bruckmann's Lexicon of Munich Art. Munich painter in the 19th and 20th centuries Century . Fifth Volume, Munich 1993, pp. 75-77
  • Lorenz Josef Reitmaeier: Dachau an art picture book. City of Dachau, 1995, hardcover / bound
  • Rudolf Herz: Marcel Duchamp - Le Mystère de Munich. Moser 2012
  • Nicole Schmid: The Haimhausen painters' colony. A forgotten artist's place and its painters . Munich 1999 (unpublished master's thesis)
  • Clemens Jöckle: Bergmann, Max . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 9, Saur, Munich a. a. 1994, ISBN 3-598-22749-3 , p. 410.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ [1] Max Bergmann in the register book of the Munich Art Academy 1904
  2. ↑ Brita Sachs: Marcel Duchamps in Munich: He experienced his total liberation . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 3, 2012
  3. ^ [2] List of works by Max Bergmann in the Great German Art Exhibition in the Haus der Kunst, including buyers
  4. ↑ [3] Selection of Bergmann's works at auctions
  5. ↑ Bruckmanns Lexikon 1993, p. 76
personal data
SURNAME Bergmann, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Furstenberg
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 1955
Place of death Haimhausen