Max Wenzlaff
Max Wenzlaff (born December 9, 1891 in Düren ; † May 30, 1974 there ) was a German landscape painter .
Life
Wenzlaff was the second youngest of five children of the Düren carpet pattern designer Arthur Max Adolph Wenzlaff and his wife Anna Augusta, née Herzwurm. He obtained the secondary school leaving certificate at the Realgymnasium Düren . He then attended the Cologne School of Applied Arts and began studying interior design. There he was a student of Robert Seuffert . In 1912 or after, he moved to the Düsseldorf Art Academy , probably on Seuffert's advice. After a year he changed schools again and enrolled at the Grand Ducal Saxon University of Fine Arts in Weimar , where he studied landscape and genre painting with Theodor Hagen and Walther Klemm .
With the outbreak of World War I, Wenzlaff was called up for military service. After the war he worked as a freelance artist in his hometown. In 1920 he received his first solo exhibition in the Leopold Hoesch Museum . In 1921 he visited his college friend Klaus Fisch in Munich. With him and his teacher Hans Beat Wieland he roamed the Munich area and drove to Berchtesgaden. In 1925 he went on a study trip to Switzerland with Fisch. In 1940 the Leopold Hoesch Museum dedicated a special exhibition to the “Düren painters” - including Willi Rixen , Theo Pfeil (1903–?), Fisch and Wenzlaff. Further exhibitions of Wenzlaff's works followed there in 1942 and 1944.
In the air raid of November 16, 1944 , Wenzlaff's apartment and work space in Düren Rurstrasse, including the 300 works stored in the basement, were completely destroyed. At the end of 1944 he therefore moved to Gevelsberg to live with his sisters Alma and Milly, where they had previously been evacuated. Soon after the war he founded a group of painters in Gevelsberg. With the addition of other, also non-visual artists, this circle developed into the "Gevelsberg Artists' Circle". In 1957/58 he returned - together with his sisters - to Düren. In 1966, decrepit, he finally moved into accommodation in the Schenkel-Schoeller-Stift retirement home in Düren-Niederau, where he died at the age of 82.
After 1945, Wenzlaff exhibited every year at the "Annual Show Düren Artists" in the Leopold Hoesch Museum. He was also represented in many galleries. He created more than 1000 paintings, mainly impressionistically painted representations of low mountain ranges, especially the Eifel , which hang all over Germany.
Web links
- Artist profile Max Wenzlaff (1891–1974) , biography on the portal treffpunkt-kunst.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Museum Kunstpalast : Artists from the Düsseldorf School of Painting (selection, as of November 2016, PDF )
- ↑ Eifel Yearbook 2007
- ↑ tracks. Magazine of the Düren History Workshop No. 15, December 2011
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wenzlaff, Max |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 9, 1891 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Düren |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 30, 1974 |
| Place of death | Düren |