Max Peiffer Watenphul

Max Peiffer Watenphul (born September 1, 1896 in Weferlingen , † July 13, 1976 in Rome ) was a German painter.

life and work

Adolescent years and studies

Max Peiffer Watenphul was born as the son of the pharmacist Karl Josef Emil Peiffer and his wife Anna. In 1903 the father died. In 1906 the mother married Dr. Heinrich Watenphul, teacher at the high school in Quedlinburg , where the family lived until 1911. The family then moved to Hattingen an der Ruhr, where the stepfather, who also wrote books on Middle Latin poetry, became the director of the secondary school. Max Peiffer attended high school in Hattingen. His half-brother Heinz was born in 1907, his half-sister Grace in 1913, and in 1914 he passed the Abitur examination.

At the request of his parents, he began to study medicine in Bonn , but then decided to study law in Strasbourg , Frankfurt am Main and Munich . There he saw pictures by Paul Klee in the Goltz bookstore; later he also met the artist personally. In 1918 he received his doctorate on canon law in Würzburg and passed the legal traineeship. A few months of military training followed in a barracks in Mülheim an der Ruhr . In 1919 he was a trainee lawyer at the Hattingen District Court. From September he carried the double name Peiffer Watenphul. In the autumn he made the decision to become a painter and to give up his legal career.

Travel and friendships

In 1919 Max Peiffer Watenphul became a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar . By Walter Gropius , he received permission to sit in on all workshops. He got his own studio and attended Johannes Itten's preliminary course . During this time the friendship with Oskar Schlemmer , Wassily Kandinsky , Gerhard Marcks , Josef Albers , Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters and Else Lasker-Schüler began . Until the end of 1923 Peiffer Watenphul had his residence in Weimar. From 1920 he was a member of the artists' association “ Das Junge Rheinland ” in Düsseldorf , befriended Otto Dix , who portrayed him, Werner Gilles , Otto Pankok and Max Ernst .

The gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim took Max Peiffer Watenphul under contract and thus secured him financial independence. In 1920 he made his first trip to Salzburg and Vienna. In 1921 the first exhibition was organized by Ernst Gosebruch in the City Art Museum in Essen. The first trip to Italy followed in November 1921, which took him via Rome and Naples to Positano , where he met his artist friend Karli Sohn-Rethel . In 1922 he worked in the enamel workshop of Maria Cyrenius in Salzburg, a former classmate at the Bauhaus. In Essen he met Alexej Jawlensky . On July 1, 1924, he traveled on a cargo ship via Cuba to Mexico, where he stayed for almost a year. In 1925 he visited Jawlensky in Wiesbaden several times, where he set up an exhibition in the museum. This was followed by a trip with Maria Cyrenius to Ragusa, Yugoslavia, and a trip to southern France, Paris, Florence and Rome.

From 1927 to 1931 he was a teacher for general artistic design at the Folkwang School in Essen, where Max Burchartz and Grete Willers, who had been with him at the Bauhaus in Weimar, also taught. Several stays in Berlin and trips to Paris, where he met Karli Sohn-Rethel and Florence Henri , followed, as well as trips to southern France and Morocco with the collector Klaus Gebhard . Peiffer Watenphul was able to deepen the interest in photography that arose during the Bauhaus period at the Folkwang School. In 1931 he finished teaching in Essen. He received the "Rome Prize".

Italy

From October 1931 to July 1932 Peiffer Watenphul stayed in Rome at the German Academy in the Villa Massimo , at the same time as Uli Nimptsch, Ernst Wilhelm Nay , Karl Rössing and Fritz Rhein . He made the acquaintance of Ludwig Curtius , Bernhard Degenhart and Eckart Peterich . In July he stayed in Gaeta with his sister Grace, Erika and Klaus Rössing . In 1933 the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh received the “Additional Award” for a “Still Life with Flowers”. In 1936 he traveled to Italy, including Rome, Latina, Sorrento , Capri , Ischia and Sicily . In 1937 the situation in Germany became more and more depressing, the artist's mail was monitored, his pictures were removed from German museums: National Gallery Berlin , Folkwang Museum Essen, City Art Collection Kassel, City Art Hall Mannheim. The “Still Life with Flowers”, which was awarded in Pittsburgh and now part of the National Gallery, was shown in the 1937 Munich exhibition “ Degenerate Art ”. In autumn Peiffer Watenphul decided to move to Italy for good. He received support from his sister Grace, who was married to the Roman architect Enrico Pasqualucci. The artist's parents moved to Essen that year because the stepfather was released from school prematurely for political reasons.

In December 1937 Peiffer Watenphul traveled to Ischia. Several German painters and intellectuals such as Werner Gilles, Rudolf Levy , Eduard Bargheer and the composer Gottfried von Eine met there . In 1940 the stepfather died.

In 1941, for financial reasons, Peiffer Watenphul was forced to accept a position mediated by Georg Muche in Krefeld at the technical college for textile surface art as successor to Johannes Itten and to return to Germany. He took over the drawing and painting class. Frequent visits to Oskar Schlemmer in Wuppertal took place. In 1943 the Krefeld studio was destroyed. Peiffer Watenphul spent the summer of the same year in Vienna, after which he taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Salzburg until winter 1946 , where he exerted a great influence on the young Salzburg painters.

In 1946, as a German, Peiffer Watenphul did not receive a residence permit in Salzburg. He therefore fled via South Tyrol to his sister in Venice, where he then lived for twelve years. In 1948 he took part in the Venice Biennale. He became friends with the painters Filippo De Pisis and Felice Carena as well as with the collector Peggy Guggenheim . His first solo exhibition after the war took place in Venice in 1948. In 1949 he made the first post-war trip to the south of Italy to Rome, Naples, Caserta , Positano and Capri. In Positano there was a reunion with Karli Sohn-Rethel and Stefan Andres .

Renewed recognition

In April 1950 he was in Florence for a month. In the same year Eberhard Hanfstaengl gave him a room at the Biennale in which his Venice pictures were shown. In the fall of 1951, Peiffer Watenphul received another passport and was able to set out on a trip to Salzburg. The city provided the artist with a studio in the Salzburg Künstlerhaus, which he retained until 1971. In Venice he met Max Ernst and Jean Arp again. Emilio Vedova, Giuseppe Santomaso, Carlo Cardazzo and the critic Bruno Alfieri were among his friends. Jean Cocteau wrote a foreword for his exhibitions. In January 1952 he made the first trip to Germany after the war: Essen, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Braunschweig, Munich were the stops, then he went on to Zurich. Since 1952 he has participated regularly in the great art exhibition in the Haus der Kunst , Munich. He became a member of the re-established German Association of Artists and also belonged to the Munich Secession for a long time. At the suggestion of the Zurich gallery owner Chichio Haller (née Trillhaase), he began to create his first color lithographs . In 1952 he had exhibitions at the Museum Folkwang Essen, the Museum am Ostwall Dortmund and the Städtisches Museum Wuppertal. In the spring of 1953 he visited Paris, where he a. a. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Florence Henri met again. From 1954 Peiffer Watenphul spent spring and autumn on Ischia and summer in Salzburg. In March 1956 he had an important exhibition in the Salzburg Residence. In 1957 the Kunstverein in Stuttgart showed an exhibition with 60 paintings, 40 watercolors and several graphic sheets and drawings in its rooms. In the fall of 1957 the artist bought a small studio in Rome, near the Piazza di Spagna . From the terrace he had a view of the Pincio . He took part in an exhibition in the Roman Palazzo delle Esposizioni in 1958/59 with the title "Arte tedesca dal 1905 ad oggi". A comprehensive retrospective in the Städtisches Museum Leverkusen showed the Venice pictures in addition to the early works.

Rome

In the fall of 1958, Peiffer Watenphul moved to Rome. In the 1960s he made many trips to southern Italy. He was friends with the German correspondents in Rome, Josef Schmitz van Vorst , Gustav René Hocke and Erich Kusch . In 1960 he traveled to Lebanon for a month and then to Greece for the first time in October 1961. An exhibition at the Kunsthalle Kiel in 1961 emphasized the importance of the Venice and Rome pictures. In February 1963 the artist's mother died in Rome. Since 1964 he has traveled to Corfu every year , where he rented a small apartment. He stayed there mostly from April to June. Peiffer Watenphul was appointed to succeed Kokoschka at the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts in Salzburg, where he taught three months a year. He received the city's ring of honor. In 1965 the artist became a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In the same year the Roman Galleria La Medusa showed an exhibition of his works from 1921 to 1964. On his 70th birthday in 1966, the gallery owners Otto Stangl in Munich and Friedrich Welz in Salzburg organized exhibitions. In November 1969 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

The last painting was created in December 1970, after which only drawings, watercolors and lithographs were made. In 1972 a retrospective took place in the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt with 90 paintings and 60 watercolors.

Max Peiffer Watenphul died shortly before his 80th birthday on July 13, 1976 in Rome, he was buried at the Cimitero acattolico in Rome. The exhibition in the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich was opened posthumously.

Honors

• Rome Prize
• “Additional Award” from the University of Pittsburgh in 1933
• Ring of Honor of the City of Salzburg 1964
• Member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Munich since 1965
• Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1969

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1921: City Art Museum Essen and Great Berlin Art Exhibition
• 1925: Museum Wiesbaden
• 1933: Pittsburgh, Thirty-First Annual International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute
• 1948: Venice. XXIV Biennale
• 1950: Venice, XXV. Biennial
• 1952: Essen, Max Peiffer Watenphul, Folkwang Museum
• 1956: Salzburg Residence, Salzburg
• 1957: Kunstverein Stuttgart
• 1959: Retrospective at the Leverkusen City Museum
• 1961: Kunsthalle Kiel
• 1965: Galleria La Medusa, Rome
• 1972: Retrospective in the Kunsthalle Darmstadt
• 1976: Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
• 1991: Wuppertal, Max Peiffer Watenphul. Painting, Von der Heydt Museum,
• 1995: Milan, Rifugio precario. Artisti e intellettuali tedeschi in Italia 1933–1945, Palazzo della Ragione; Berlin, Academy of the Arts
• 1996–1997: Rome, Max Peiffer Watenphul, Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo; Hanover, Sprengel Museum; Venice, German-Italian Cultural Society, Palazzo Albrizzi
• 1999: Berlin, Max Peiffer Watenphul, A Painter Photographs Italy, Bauhaus Archive
• 2000: Rome, Max Peiffer Watenphul e l'Italia, Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo
• 2001: Salzburg, Max Peiffer Watenphul, still lifes and photographs, Rupertinum
• 2004: Salzburg. Max Peiffer Watenphul, Salzburg, Pictures of a City, Gallery of the City of Salzburg
• 2005: Essen, Max Peiffer Watenphul - Das Industriebild, Museum Folkwang
• 2007: Munich, Max Peiffer Watenphul - drawings, Pinakothek der Moderne, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung

literature

• Nikolaus Schaffer / Anton Gugg: Max Peiffer Watenphul - Salzburg, pictures of a city. With personal memories from Alessandra Pasqualucci. Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg, 2004
• Brigitt Frielinghaus: Max Peiffer Watenphul 1896–1976. Paintings and watercolors from the Städtisches Museum, work reports, publications from the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig. Volume 63.Braunschweig, 1993
• Grace Watenphul Pasqualucci / Alessandra Pasqualucci: Max Peiffer Watenphul - catalog raisonné. Volume I: paintings, watercolors. With a foreword by Bernhard Degenhart. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, 1989
• Grace Watenphul Pasqualucci / Alessandra Pasqualucci: Max Peiffer Watenphul - catalog raisonné. Volume II: Drawings, enamel work, textiles, prints, photography. With a foreword by Sabine Fehlemann. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, 1993
• Gustav René Hocke: Max Peiffer Watenphul - Personality, Life, Work, Stuttgart, 1976
• Bert Bilzer: Peiffer Watenphul. Göttingen, 1974
• Heinrich Goertz: My teacher Max Peifer Watenpuhl (first published in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, January 3, 1971)
• Eva Chrambach:  Peiffer Watenphul, Julius Franz Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 161 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Peiffer Watenphul in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website about Max Peiffer Watenphul
• http://www.peifferwatenphul.de/7_2_texte_02_%20goertz.html

Individual evidence

1. ↑ He lived in Italy for a long time, but always kept German citizenship
2. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Peiffer-Watenphul, Max ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed December 6, 2015) 
3. ↑ Max Peiffer Watenphul - The still life. Exhibition cat. From the Heydt Museum Wuppertal, 2001, p. 103
4. ↑ Max Peiffer Watenphul - The still life. Exhibition cat. From the Heydt Museum Wuppertal, 2001, p. 103
5. ↑ http://www.peifferwatenphul.de/7_2_texte_02_%20goertz.html