Maximilian Klewer

Self-portrait, oil on canvas by Maximilian Klewer , 1924, private collection

Maximilian Klewer (born December 7, 1891 in Barmen (now part of Wuppertal ), † July 27, 1963 in Bad Soden am Taunus ) was a German draftsman , painter and illustrator and associate professor at the State University of Fine Arts in Berlin .

Life

Maximilian Klewer was born on December 7, 1891 in Barmen as the son of a merchant in a simple family. He got his artistic talent from his mother, a costume seamstress. 1901–1905 he completed an apprenticeship as a sign painter after finishing elementary school. From 1906 to 1911 he attended the arts and crafts school in Barmen. Afterwards Maximilian Klewer continued his studies at the Royal Academic University of Fine Arts in Berlin . Here he studied a. a. with Konrad Boese , whose personal assistant and later he became his successor. He undertook his first trip to Italy to Florence in 1913 as a scholarship holder. During the First World War he was used as a medic and was also able to work as an illustrator for a field newspaper. After the end of the war he returned to the now so-called State University of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he had his own studio as a master student of Arthur Kampf . From 1919 to 1943 Maximilian Klewer was head of a drawing class. In 1921 he received an extraordinary professorship. The best known of his numerous students was Werner Heldt .

In 1923 he married his student Hildegard Kasten; the marriage had three children. In 1924 he made his second trip to Italy and participated in the "Great Berlin Art Exhibition". A study trip to Paris followed in 1926/27 . In the years from 1931 to 1941 he stayed regularly in the Margraviate of Brandenburg to draw and paint outdoors with his students. 1942–1943 Maximilian Klewer was a student at Villa Massimo , the German Academy of Arts in Rome. Soon after his return to Berlin, his Berlin apartment was destroyed in a bomb attack in 1943. So he fled with his wife and youngest child via various stations to Frankfurt-Höchst . From there he moved to Bad Soden am Taunus in 1946. Here he worked as a freelance portraitist as well as a commissioned painter until the end. In 1952 and 1953 he had an exhibition in Bad Soden and one in Frankfurt am Main at the Kunstverein . Maximilian Klewer died on July 27, 1963 in Bad Soden am Taunus.

plant

Maximilian Klewer's artistic oeuvre encompasses the classic themes of portrait , landscape , figurative composition and still life . Parallel to his painting, he created an extensive graphic work with numerous studies of nature, which he often used to prepare his picture compositions. Based on Art Nouveau and late impressionist tendencies that were taught to him at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Barmen, he found a naturalistic style after 1910 and in Berlin. Traumatized by the | First World War, grotesque, parodistic and symbolistic-fantastic works are now being created.

Since 1919, surface and plasticity have been in an exciting relationship to one another in his works. The strict architectural arrangement of the figures in the compositions of the 1920s reflects the zeitgeist of modernism . In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he created portraits in the New Objectivity style and balanced landscapes of the Mark Brandenburg.

At the beginning of the 1940s, shaped by his stay in Rome and his work at the Villa Massimo as well as the special light in Italy, he developed a softer color scheme and a more relaxed approach to his presentation. The influence of Roman antiquity is now unmistakable , which has a harmonizing and idealizing effect on his representations.

From the very beginning, the self-portrait , which serves his artistic and personal self-reflection, has a special place in his oeuvre . It not only plays a special role as an autonomous portrait, but also within his biblical compositions, in which he often uses and stages himself as a model. In his self-portraits he processed his respective phases of life and various emotional states from melancholy, hope and high-flying expectation through fear to despair and artistic resignation. Basically, he chooses different stylistic devices depending on the image content.

After the end of the Second World War , he turned increasingly to religious topics. Christian-ethical search for meaning characterizes the last years of his life, in which he undertakes painting attempts in the manner of the old masters and devotes himself to the review and order of his work until the end of his life. Maximilian Klewer passed on a culture of drawing and painting that went back to the Renaissance and, as a multi-faceted naturalist, consciously took on the attitude of a traditionalist. Throughout his life he remains committed to nature and European art tradition in his art.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• Paintings and drawings by Maximilian Klewer, Bad Soden / Taunus city administration, 1952
• Double exhibition: Maximilian Klewer and Richard Seewald, Frankfurter Kunstverein , Frankfurt a. M., 1953
• “Ego sum” - self-portraits by Maximilian Klewer, workshop exhibition, Kassel , 1981
• Maximilian Klewer (1891–1963) - drawings . Organizer Museum Museumsverein, Schreibersches Haus , Bad Arolsen, 19 May to 31 October 2012

Participation in exhibitions

• Great art exhibition in Berlin, 1924
• Academic autumn exhibition, Berlin, 1925
• Pictures are not prohibited - works of art since the mid-19th century - Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen , Düsseldorf, 1982
• Homage to Bad Soden artist, Stadtgalerie Bad Soden am Taunus, December 2012

literature

• Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker: General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present . Volume XX, Verlag EA Seemann, Leipzig 1927, p. 490.
• Maximilian Klewer (1891–1963) painter and draftsman (text: Evelyn Lehmann), Museum-Bad Arolsen, Michael Verlag Imhof 2012.
• Philipp Demandt in: Weltkunst-August 2012, pages 112–113 with illustration "Woman's head with hand", 1924

Web links

Commons : Maximilian Klewer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files