Max Radler

Max Fritz Adolf Radler (born January 15, 1904 in Breslau , † November 19, 1971 in Munich ) was a German painter and caricaturist. His paintings in the style of New Objectivity tend towards magical realism . Frequent motifs are railways and industrial landscapes. After 1945, Radler also made a name for himself as a caricaturist, dealing with militarism and the aftermath of National Socialism.

life and work

Max Radler was born on January 15, 1904, the son of wheelwright Max Paul Radler and his wife Maria. born Rich, born in Wroclaw. Until 1918 he learned in a stucco, carpenter and sculptor workshop in Opole ( Upper Silesia ), then he was trained as a decorative painter. In 1923 he took a job as a decorative painter in Munich. At the same time he studied at the arts and crafts school with Otto Grassl and Georg Schrimpf . He met his future wife Rosmina, who later also worked as a painter. Rosmina Radler created still lifes and portraits of children and women.

Radler then worked as a freelance painter, from 1930 he belonged to the group Die Juryfrei . His pictures are shaped by the New Objectivity , but often show surrealistic echoes ( magical realism ). The technology-loving artist mainly painted urban landscapes, often with bridges and railways, but also portraits of women and people in a technical environment. His painting The Radio Listener from 1930 is well known. Radler was friends with Oskar Maria Graf , for whose book Dorfbanditen he made woodcuts.

After the war, Radler worked for the WE Freitag publishing house as a cartoonist for the revived Simplicissimus magazine . He also worked as a draftsman for the Schwabinger Bilderbogen and the children's magazine Ping Pong . He continued to create paintings and participated regularly in the Great Art Exhibition in Munich in the Haus der Kunst as a member of the New Group .

Until the 1950s the artist worked as a bricklayer or house painter from time to time because the income from his artistic activity was insufficient.

Max Radler died of a heart attack on November 19, 1971 in Munich.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1989 Munich, Karl & Faber - Max Radler, Rosmina Radler
• 2019 Hamburg, Bucerius Kunst Forum - World in Transition - Art of the Twenties

literature

• Ulrich Kelber: With a sharp pen against war and the clergy. Article from June 4, 2012 in the "Mittelbayerischen"
• Documentation archive Funk for researching the history of radio and electronic media, section on painter of the picture "The radio listener"
• Index entry Radler, Max In: Deutsche Biographie, accessed on June 26, 2019.
• Cyclist max . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 4 : Q-U . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1958, p. 8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scan of the original birth certificate viewed on ancestry.de on August 2, 2020.