Max Lazarus
Max Lion Lazarus (born July 12, 1892 in Trier , German Reich ; † December 9, 1961 in Denver , United States ) was a German painter and until 1933 one of the most sought-after synagogue painters of his time.
Origin and education
Max Lazarus was the first child of the Jewish couple Lippmann (1865–1934) and Karoline Lazarus born. Simon (1861–1937) born in Trier. He was followed by six siblings: Josef (1894–1958 New York), Bertha “Nani” (1895–1942 Auschwitz), Julie (1897–1943 Sobibor), Suzanne (1899–1984 Denver), Berta Regina (1903–1943 Lódz) and Ernst (1905-1993 São Paulo). Lippmann Lazarus ran a business as a timber and coal merchant in Zuckerbergstrasse diagonally across from the synagogue, for which he worked for several years as a synagogue servant ( Schammes ) and cemetery overseer.
Max Lazarus first attended the Jewish elementary school, which had existed since 1825, and later the Israelite elementary school, the smallest elementary school in Trier. After finishing elementary school in the spring of 1906, his father gave him an apprenticeship with a decorative painter, which he began on April 18, 1906, when he was not yet 14 years old. His teacher, Carl Aich, worked, among other things, as a church painter, so that Max Lazarus got a first look at the colored design of church rooms here. In addition to his apprenticeship, Max Lazarus attended the painting class with August Trümper (1874–1956) at the industrial training and trade school in Trier and, after successfully completing his apprenticeship in 1909, stayed at the school for another year as a full-time student was renamed "Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule".
From April 1910 to April 1911 Max Lazarus attended the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts . Founded in 1883, it had been reformed shortly before by Peter Behrens (director 1903–1907) and was therefore one of the most progressive arts and crafts schools in the empire, characterized by Julius Meier-Graefe as a "model educational institution" and, in 1906, as a leading institution alongside the arts and crafts school in Vienna Called Europe.
In the second half of 1911, Lazarus worked in the workshop for decorative painting and handicrafts Karl Throll in Munich and in Innsbruck for the decorative painter, carpenter and varnisher Johann Birkmann. Together with his former teacher August Trümper, he took part in a competition in 1912 to obtain drafts for stone drawings for the artistic design of railway compartments of the Robert-Voigtländer-Verlag in Leipzig and submitted two drafts. Lazarus' design of the Porta Nigra in front of a glowing red sky was awarded a prize by the jury, purchased and exhibited in 1914 as part of the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne.
Presumably spurred on by this first success, Lazarus moved to Weimar in the summer of 1913 and attended the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Applied Arts in Weimar under Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) in the winter semester of 1913 . Apparently Lazarus made the most of all opportunities to continue his education at the most progressive institutions of the time. Interrupted again and again by times in which he earned his living and school fees, he gained a comprehensive overview of the current work in the field of art and applied art in the late Wilhelmine era.
The First World War interrupted his training. Lazarus served as a gunner of Messtrupps 31 in the replacement battalion of the foot artillery regiment No. 9 from Ehrenbreitstein on the western front in France, where he was admitted to the reserve field hospital in Allennes-les-Marais on May 28, 1918 with pneumonia and pleurisy . After several months in the hospitals of Ostdorf / Bavaria and Wittstock / Brandenburg, he was released on October 22nd, 1918 as "homeland suitable for garrison use" and sent to the artillery measuring school in Trier as a guard gunners. Despite the health problems he suffered for the rest of his life, he was not awarded a small monthly pension until 1934.
In the spring of 1921 Max Lazarus lived in Berlin for some time and took lessons at the Reimann arts and crafts school in Berlin-Schöneberg. a. with Georg Tappert (1880–1957), one of the most important artists of German Expressionism , and with the graphic designer Max Hertwig (1881–1975). Due to the freedom that Tappert and his colleagues gave their students in their personal artistic development, there was no radical change in style after Max Lazarus' time in Berlin, but this experience made him more independent and secure. His brushwork became looser and freer.
Artistic career
Back in Trier, Max Lazarus lived as a freelance artist and in 1920 was one of the co-founders of the "Trier Artists 'Guild", the first artists' association in Trier, which was closely connected to the crafts and arts and crafts school. Already in the exhibition reviews of that time one can hear what was also emphasized again and again by later reviewers, namely his outstanding skills as a colorist, his realistic rendering of light and air moods and his extraordinary skill in dealing with tempera technique, its brittleness and dullness knew how to overcome. A short time later he married Simone Blasberg, who was born in Paris, and built a house on Deutschherrenstrasse. In 1924 their daughter Norma was born. In 1925 he changed his trade name “painting” to “art painting”. Apparently at this point he was already able to make a living from selling his paintings. A large number of portraits in his estate and in public and private ownership suggest that he also carried out portrait commissions more often.
The painting of the synagogue in Merzig in 1921/22 marked the beginning of his career as a synagogue painter for Max Lazarus. When Harold Hammer-Schenk wrote his standard work on synagogue construction in Germany in 1981, he was not yet aware of all of the synagogues that Max Lazarus had painted, but he described him as one of the “most interesting personalities involved in synagogue construction in the twenties Years were concerned ”. In the course of researching the exhibition “Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. A Jewish Artist's Fate ”(Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier 2010), the artist's estate in the USA was located and evaluated. Together with the synagogues in Homburg / Saar, Trier, Langen / Hessen, Neumagen / Dhron, Lübbecke / Westphalia, Thalfang, Herford and the cemetery hall in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, Lazarus designed wall paintings and in some cases also glass paintings from a total of eight synagogues and one cemetery hall. In contrast to the landscapes, still lifes and portraits, which distinguish him as a subtle colorist, but in no way allow his religious roots to be felt, his Jewish faith and his profound knowledge of its symbols and contents are manifest in these monumental paintings.
Flight and exile in the USA
Shortly after taking power, the National Socialists began "cultural cleansing". Max Lazarus was excluded from the public cultural scene. For a few years he kept himself afloat with house painters and as a painter of “quick portraits” in downtown Trier, but the increasing pressure on the Jewish population finally caused him to leave his beloved homeland in September 1938 and to go with his wife and daughter USA flee. One of his two brothers emigrated to Brazil, the other to New York, one sister was able to hide in the south of France, but the other three sisters who failed to escape were murdered with their families in Auschwitz , Sobibor and Lódz.
Max Lazarus and his family settled in St. Louis , where they initially found shelter with relatives. He made a living designing wallpaper patterns and doing odd jobs, and tried to gain a foothold in the new area. He achieved his first success in the USA when, in the spring of 1939, one of his paintings was selected for participation in the large art exhibition "American Art Today" at the World's Fair in New York. In the same year Max Lazarus was accepted as a member of the St. Louis Artists' Guild, which in the past included such well-known artists as George Caleb Bingham and William Merritt Chase and among his contemporaries the artists Thomas Hart Benton and Fred Conway . He subsequently exhibited his work with them at the Artists' Guild Gallery and the St. Louis Art Museum.
The paintings of this period show a change in the treatment of color and style. Max Lazarus executed his works with an expressive handwriting since the beginning of the 1930s, but in the works created in St. Louis the paint is literally applied with a spatula. The pulsating life of the American city is also reflected: While the views of Trier and the Moselle were mostly deserted, the depictions of people and cars now make his images appear much more dynamic.
He was honored with a first solo exhibition, received very good reviews, and seemed to be establishing himself in St. Louis when he was diagnosed with severe tuberculosis. The illness forced him to relocate to the climatically more favorable Denver, where he spent almost two years in the sanatorium of the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society (JCRS). During his inpatient stay, Max Lazarus began to give art lessons to his fellow patients as part of the JCRS rehabilitation programs. His art course received such a positive response that after he was released as cured in late July 1944, he was hired as an art teacher. Life in the sanatorium is reflected in many of his paintings and drawings.
Once again he tried to start over and gain a foothold in Denver. But Max Lazarus with his expressive realism found himself between the fronts of the realistic and the expressive or abstract artists and was faced with the reservations of both sides. Nevertheless, he was accepted into the Denver Artists Guild and exhibited his work together with the guild at the Denver Art Museum. In addition to landscapes and portraits, his late work is characterized by a whole series of tempera works, in which he documented the feverish construction activity of Denver and the urban expansion of the 1950s. The many construction sites with their excavators and cranes, their lines and the geometric structures they painted in the sky with their cantilevers fascinated him and in the following years became his preferred motif.
In August 1954, Max Lazarus returned to his hometown Trier to visit friends and to research the whereabouts of family members whom he had not heard from since his emigration. However, his health forced him to return to the United States with his family earlier than planned. The last years of his life were overshadowed by stomach cancer, which he succumbed to on December 9, 1961 in Denver.
Exhibitions (selection)
- 1914: Cologne, Werkbund exhibition, May 15 to August 8
- 1920: Trier, Joh. Nic. Müller (Blue Hand), founding exhibition of the Trier Artists' Guild, September 19 to October 3
- 1921: Trier, garden room of the casino, founding exhibition “Trier painter group” December 15 to 24
- 1929: Trier, Moselle Museum, special exhibition in the Simeonstift, painting collection of the Moselle Museum, October
- 1930: Luxemburg, Galerie Menn, solo exhibition, June 21 to July 6
- 1932: Luxemburg, Galerie Menn, solo exhibition, February 13th to 25th
- 1934: Eupen / Belgium, Hotel Klein, solo exhibition, June
- 1939: St. Louis / MO, St. Louis Art Museum, Annual Exhibition of Paintings & Sculpture by Artists of St. Louis & Vicinity, November 2nd to 30th
- 1939: St. Louis / MO, Young Men's Hebrew Association, solo exhibition
- 1940: St. Louis / MO, St. Louis Artists' Guild, Ninth Annual Exhibition of Watercolor and Craftwork, October
- 1941: St. Louis / MO, St. Louis Art Museum, First Annual Missouri Exhibition, November
- 1942: St. Louis / MO, Famous-Barr Co., solo exhibition
- 1945: Laguna Beach / CA, Laguna Beach Art Association, 4th National Print and Drawing Exhibition, May 1-30
- 1945: Denver / CO, Denver Art Museum, 51st Annual Exhibition, summer
- 1945: Oakland / CA, Oakland Art Gallery, Thirteenth Annual Exhibition of Watercolors, Pastels, Drawings and Prints, October 7th to November 4th
- 1946: Philadelphia / PA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, October / November
- 1946: Denver / CO, Artists Guild of Denver, Chappell House, 16th Annual Exhibition, December
- 1949: Omaha / NE, Joslyn Memorial Art Museum, The 17th Annual Six States Exhibition, February 2 to March 13
- 1949: Denver / CO, Denver Art Museum, First Annual Denver Metropolitan Exhibition, November 1949 to January 9, 1950
- 1951: Wichita / KS, Wichita Art Association, 20th Annual Graphic Arts Exhibition, January 7th to 29th
- 1951: Austin / TX, Fine Art Association, Fourth Southwestern Print and Drawing Exhibition, March / April
- 1952: Denver / CO, Jewish Community Center, solo exhibition, March 16 to April 16
- 1955: Springfield / MA, Museum of Fine Arts, 36th Annual Jury Exhibition of the Springfield Art League, April 3 to May 1
- 1956: Canon City / CO, Gallery of the Fine Arts Center, Ninth Annual Blossom Festival, April 28 to May 26
- 2010: Trier, City Museum Simeonstift Trier, Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. The Fate of a Jewish Artist, solo exhibition, March 21 to June 27
- 2011: St. Louis / MO, Sheldon Art Galleries, Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. The Jewish Fate of an Artist, solo exhibition, February 18 to May 7
- 2011: Denver / CO, Denver Public Library, Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. The Jewish Fate of an Artist, solo exhibition, June 5 to August 23
literature
- Volker Beckmann: Documentation on the history of the Jewish community in Lübbecke 1830–1945 , Lübbecke 1993
- Günter Birkmann, Hartmut Stratmann: Consider who you are standing in front of. 300 synagogues and their history in Westphalia and Lippe , Essen 1998
- Wilhelm (Albert) Blatt: Heimatkunst in the first exhibition of the Trier Artists' Guild , in: Kur-Trier, No. 6, 1920, p. 89 ff.
- Reinhold Bohlen, Benz Botmann (eds.): New address: Kaiserstraße - 50 Years Synagogue Trier , Trier 2007
- Marianne Bühler: Catholics and Jews before, during and after the catastrophe , in: Martin Persch, Bernhard Schneider (Ed.): History of the Diocese of Trier , Volume 5: Persistence and Renewal , Trier 2004
- Stefan Fischbach, Ingrid Westerhoff (arr.): "... and this is the gate of heaven" - synagogues. Rhineland-Palatinate - Saarland , Mainz 2005
- Gerd J. Grein: History of the Jewish community in Langen and its synagogue , Langen 1978
- Harold Hammer-Schenk: Synagogues in Germany. History of a building type in the 19th and 20th centuries (1780–1933) , 2 volumes, Hamburg 1981
- Jacques Jacob: Existence and fall of the old Jewish community in Trier , Trier 1984
- Jacob Jacobs: Synagogue Art of the Present , in: From old and new times. Illustrated supplement to the Israelitisches Familienblatt , Hamburg, No. 5, November 10, 1927, p. 40
- Jacob Jacobs: The Merzig Synagogue , in: From old and new times. Illustrated supplement to the Israelitisches Familienblatt , Hamburg, No. 24, March 11, 1926, p. 350
- Hans-Joachim Kann: New Findings on the Old Trier Synagogue (1859-1944) , in: Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch 1999 , p. 365 ff
- Johann Heinrich Kell: History of the Merzig district. Its political, cultural and economic development up to the present , Saarbrücken 1925
- Wilhelm Laubenthal : The synagogue communities of the Merzig district 1648–1942 , Saarbrücken 1984
- Max Lazarus: Memories , arr. by Hans Chenoch Meyer , Dortmund 1967
- Christl Lehnert-Leven: The painter with the wing shoes , exhibition catalog of the City Museum Simeonstift Trier, Trier 1996
- Emmeline Lytle: Inspired from the Abstract , in: Denver Post Empire Magazine, Jan. 14, 1951, p. 16
- Paul Mauder: Trier painters of the last fifty years , in: Trierische Landeszeitung, April 1924
- Paul Mauder: Trier Painting , in: Trierische Heimat, Issue 7, 1931, p. 97 ff. And Issue 8/9, 1931, p. 117 ff.
- Alex Murphree: Max Lazarus Earns High Honor for Lithographs and Woodcuts , in: Denver Post, March 25, 1951
- Alex Murphree: Max Lazarus to Stage One-Man Show , in: Denver Post, March 16, 1952
- Alex Murphree: Three-Painter Show Intrigues Gallery-Goers , in: Denver Post, March 1952
- Reiner Nolden (edited with the participation of Horst Mühleisen and Bernhard Simon): Jews in Trier , exhibition catalog City Library / City Archives Trier, 1988
- Johannes Oberdorf: 1884–1995: Art and Trade Association, Art Association. Fine artists and art lovers in the district of Trier eV , Society for Fine Arts Trier eV, Festschrift of the Society for Fine Arts eV, Trier 1995
- Robert Reichard, Thomas Heidenblut: Synagogues in the district of Trier-Saarburg , Trier, 2000
- Thomas Ridder: Synagogues in Westphalia , Münster 2000
- Hermann Roeder: Trier painter: Max Lazarus , in: New Trierisches Jahrbuch 1966, pp. 57–61
- Reinhard Schneider: Homburg / Saar , in: Stefan Fischbach, Ingrid Westerhoff (arrangement): “... and this is the gate of heaven” - Synagogues Rhineland-Palatinate - Saarland , Mainz 2005, p. 443 ff.
- Bärbel Schulte: Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. A Jewish artist's fate , exhibition catalog City Museum Simeonstift Trier 2010
- Trier Artists' Guild (Ed.): Festschrift for the Trier Art Week , Trier 1920
- Hilde Weirich, Winfried Krause: Contributions to the history of the Jews in Thalfang , Spiesen-Elversberg 1995
Individual evidence
- ^ Bärbel Schulte: Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. A Jewish artist's fate, exhibition catalog Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier 2010, p. 32, ISBN 978-3-930866-31-1
- ↑ Commercial files of the city of Trier, City Archives Trier, Tb 15/1216
- ^ Journeyman's letter and certificates in the archive of the artist's family
- ↑ Bärbel Schulte (ed.): "On Form Refinement and Taste Education" - Die Werkkunstschule Trier, exhibition catalog of the Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier 2003, p. 32, ISBN 978-3-930866-18-2
- ↑ Anne Barbara Knerr: The great creative reform movements on the occasion of industrialization in England, Germany and France, 2005, p. 66, ISBN 978-3-638-37685-3
- ^ Testimonials in the archive of the artist's family
- ^ Letter from Robert Voigtländer dated December 17, 1912 in the family archive. See also: R. Voigtländer publisher's catalog, Leipzig: Handbook of artistic wall decorations, From German lands. Colored stone drawings after town and landscape pictures by German painters, Leipzig 1912
- ↑ ThHStA Weimar, Grand Ducal School of Applied Arts 49, Bl. 23v-24r
- ↑ State Office for Health and Social Affairs Berlin, Pension Office - sick book warehouse, global certificate 33783
- ^ ID of the school in the archive of the artist's family
- ^ "The exhibition of the Trier artists' guild", in: Trierischer Volksfreund, September 22, 1920; Wilhelm Blatt: Heimatkunst in the 1st exhibition of the Trier Artists' Guild, in: Kur-Trier, No. 6, November 1920, p. 90
- ↑ Harold Hammer-Schenk: Synagogues in Germany. History of a building type in the 19th and 20th centuries (1780–1933), Hamburg 1981, part 1, p. 526, ISBN 978-3-7672-0726-4
- ^ Bärbel Schulte: Max Lazarus, Trier - St. Louis - Denver. A Jewish artist's fate, exhibition catalog Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier 2010, pp. 259–313, ISBN 978-3-930866-31-1
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lazarus, Max |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lazarus, Max Lion (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 12, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Trier , Germany |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 9, 1961 |
| Place of death | Denver , United States |