Maximilian Leo

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Maximilian Leo (born May 16, 1912 in Saint Petersburg , † 1998 in Oldenburg (Oldb) ) was a German-Finnish painter.

life and work

Maximilian Leo spent his youth as the son of Russian immigrants in south-east Finland. There he also graduated from high school in 1929 and drew and painted from nature to pass the time. He began his art studies in 1934 (until 1936) in Viipuri (Wyborg) in Karelia (now part of Russia). Despite his love and attachment to Finland, he wanted to “go out into the big world” and went to Berlin in 1936 to the Academy of Fine Arts , where he studied with Erik Richter and Kurt Wehlte, among others . During his student days, the Berlin University regularly carried out summer excursions to Rügen to practice painting from nature. This capturing and pictorial retention of moods of nature runs through the entire later work. With war-related interruptions, he studied in Berlin until 1945. A picture from a magazine Die neue Saat from 1940 about the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich with a picture “Fishing boats on the Rügen beach” is the only evidence from this time, along with two photographs of his pictures.

He spent the first post-war years from 1945 to 1948 in the countryside in the Sauerland and the Kaiserstuhl. There he created not only landscape pictures, but also very detailed studies of horses, cows, goats, geese, ox carts and farm wagons, which he carried out as red chalk drawings . Some drawings by children from the village were also made during this time. When his family was founded, Maximilian Leo settled in Düren in 1949 . From 1951 to 1952 he lived with his family in Blens in the Eifel, where a picture of the Thomas Josef Heimbach cloth factory in Düren was created in addition to landscapes. Because he was of the opinion that he could live better in Finland with his naturalistic conception of art and be able to support the family, he and his family also moved to Finland twice, but returned permanently to Germany in 1956.

Maximilian Leo took part in many exhibitions and also carried out his own “Finnish Landscapes” exhibitions in the Rhineland and other parts of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1959 he was forced to give up his life as a freelance artist and became an art teacher at the girls' high school St. Michael in Ahlen . During the time of his teaching activity he refrained from exhibitions. At that time he hardly painted in Germany, only one picture was taken in Ahlen - a view from the window of his apartment. Since his teaching activity did not fill him, he devoted himself instead to the study of Russian history and received his doctorate in philosophy in June 1969 with a dissertation on the “patriotic coloring and reality in Russian literature in the first third of the 18th century. Century "at the Westphalian Wilhelms-Universität Münster . A professional change did not go hand in hand with this dissertation, however, he remained an art teacher in Ahlen. But from 1972 he continued to paint on his “Finnish Landscapes” during the summer holidays he was in Finland. With these pictures he kept capturing the changing seasons and the lighting in the picture. These nature studies run like a red thread through his entire work. He himself referred to his pictures as “portrait landscapes” that capture time, space and natural mood and - as if viewed from the window - capture them in images. He was interested in capturing the same motifs as the seasons change and the lighting changes. He painted rock and lake landscapes at different times of the year and day, boats, fish and hunting still lifes . Representations of old Finnish farm rooms, typical equipment and hunting still life from Lapland were also created. Maximilian Leo traveled all over Finland to paint, but increasingly preferred his Finnish home environment in south-east Finland at Lake Kivijärvi in ​​Luumäki .

In 1979 he moved to his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren in Oldenburg. Around this time, there was an even more intensive examination of still lifes. In addition to red cabbage, fruit and mushrooms, it was always fish, his “favorite dishes”, that inspired him to paint. The garfish, which he bought in the fish hall to paint, reminded him of his academy days. In the last phase of his life until his death in 1998, Maximilian Leo went on further painting trips to Finland with an old friend - Annedora Vielhaber, who died in 2008. The painting trips also led to Switzerland, Italy and the Harz Mountains, but soon after the fall of the Wall in 1993 and 1994 also to Rügen, to the island that he had got to know during his time at the academy and that he especially loved. He died in Oldenburg (Oldb) in 1998.

Works (selection)

  • Winter landscape, oil
  • Ruined Landscape with Girls, 1944, Bavarian State Painting Collections
  • North Caucasus, 1944, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

Exhibitions

  • 1947 (October): Menden, local history museum
  • 1949 (October): Neheim-Hüsten (Im Fresekenhof)
  • 1950 (March 19 to April 16): Düren, Leopold Hoesch Museum
  • 1952 (December): Düren, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum
  • 1954 (September): Düren, Kolping House
  • 1954 (October): Aachen (The Bridge in the British Center)
  • 1954 (November): Dortmund (The Bridge)
  • 1954 (December): Bochum
  • 1954 (December): Wuppertal
  • 1955 (March): Hamburg (Finnish Week)
  • 1981 (August): Wilhelmshaven
  • 1983 (March): Oldenburg (Association of Visual Artists)
  • 1984 (August): Luumäki-Taavetti, Finland
  • 1984 (September): Savonlinna, Finland
  • 1985 (October): Emmendingen
  • 1986 (June / July): Lucerne (Swiss Association of Friends of Finland)
  • 1986 (April): Ahlen (Stadtsparkasse)
  • 1989 (June): Braunschweig (German-Finnish Society)
  • 1991 (March): Gallery in Ruhwarden
  • 1992 (February): Hamburg (Finnish seaman's church)
  • 1992 (May): Oldenburg (main office of OLB)
  • 1992 (September): Oldenburg, BBK gallery

Fonts

  • Patriotic coloring and reality in Russian literature in the first third of the 18th century ; Dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree of the philosophical faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 1969

Left

swell

  1. ↑ Kunstchronik , Volume 3; Central Institute for Art History in Munich, Association of German Art Historians, H. Carl 1950, p. 78
personal data
SURNAME Leo, Maximilian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Finnish painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH 1998
Place of death Oldenburg (Oldb)