Michael Mathias Prechtl

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Michael Mathias Prechtl (born April 26, 1926 in Amberg ; † March 19, 2003 in Nuremberg ) was a German painter, draftsman and illustrator.

Michael Mathias Prechtl was best known for his illustrations of literary classics, such as ETA Hoffmann , Thomas More , Dante , Goethe and Benvenuto Cellini or Mozart's letters to his Bäsle . He reached a wider public through numerous cover illustrations for the New York Times and the Spiegel , which he designed in the 1970s and 1980s.

life and work

Prechtl was the son of the miner Mathias Prechtl and his wife Margarete, née Donhauser. As a boy, he spent his school holidays in the early 1930s on his grandfather's remote farm. From 1937 he attended secondary school, today's Gregor-Mendel-Gymnasium in Amberg. After serving as an air force helper in an anti-aircraft battery in Nuremberg and for the Reich Labor Service in Poland from 1943 , he joined the Wehrmacht in Straubing as a soldier in 1944 and, after training on a tank destroyer, went to the Eastern Front in the Memel region . When the city of Königsberg surrendered , he was taken prisoner by the Red Army as one of the few surviving defenders of the city in April 1945 . For the next nearly five years as a prisoner of war, he worked in the sawmill, mine, refinery, and farm kolkhoz . He fell ill with dysentery , scurvy and dystrophy . His time as a soldier under the Hitler regime and a prisoner of war under Stalin was to have a lasting impact on his further life and work. He himself later said: "Hell is made by people themselves, worse than people have made it cannot be made by the devil." In 1949 he returned home to Amberg.

From May to October 1950 Prechtl worked as a pipe founder at the Luitpoldhütte in Amberg. In November he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg . The Nuremberg Art Academy had been evacuated to the baroque castle in Ellingen because of bomb damage , and nine professors taught 50 students in the idyllic village. His livelihood Prechtl received a returnee scholarship in the amount of 90 marks. In 1951 he cycled to Venice , Reims , Paris and Chartres . In 1952 he received first prize in a competition for the poster for the exhibition Das Internationale Poster in Karlsruhe and took part in the Iron and Steel exhibition in Düsseldorf . In the same year he went on a tour of Spain . In 1954 the academy and its students were able to return to Nuremberg. Prechtl spent the rest of his life in Nuremberg. In 1955 he created his first ceramic mural and took part in the Colored Graphics exhibition of the Kestner Society in Hanover and ten German museums. The year 1956 and his marriage to the painter Frydl Zuleeg marked the beginning of his work as a freelance artist. Other awards as a painter soon followed solo exhibitions and the first museum purchase of one of his lithographs by the State Graphic Collection in Munich in 1958. His daughter Pamela was born in October of the same year.

Entrance of the Nuremberg Toy Museum with the Gockelreiter

Around 1960 Prechtl began to deal with the work of Albrecht Dürer . Dürer had been appropriated by the National Socialists as an exemplary, great German, and a return to his work was frowned upon in the young Federal Republic, similar to Richard Wagner's music . Cautiously and independently of one another, the younger artists felt their way back to the old masters. In the work Prechtl there was now always Dürer quotes and homages - he counted it next to Pablo Picasso to his patron saints . In 1963 he took part in the large art exhibition in Munich with two large-format mixed media ; in the same year he was elected deputy chairman of the Albrecht Dürer Association (from 1964 Kunstverein Nürnberg Albrecht Dürer Society ) in Nuremberg. He gave up his voluntary work as deputy chairman, managing director and exhibition organizer only in 1977 for professional and health reasons. In 1969 he began a series of large-format red chalk drawings that transform Dürer's works. The series was completed in 1986 under the title Dürer Suite .

In 1965 Prechtl began the series Intimate Moral and Cultural History of the West with the picture The Birth of the Idea . Here he developed and cultivated his unmistakable style, combining drawing and painting and using his own techniques such as hand rastering, which also included a preference for old handmade paper with all its folds and stains. Many picture titles are puns and ambiguous. There is no chronology and no common thread. He took up motifs from antiquity as well as from the Peasants' War , the Weimar Republic or the 68s daily politics. Even if he used similar means as in the caricature , his pictures were never intended to be political caricatures of the day. An example is the connection of the Filbinger affair six years later (1984) with the depiction of the execution of Socrates in the paper The terrible marine judge Philostratos sentenced Socrates to death . Prechtl also worked on the series throughout his life; She always had to stand back for more important jobs and work. By the time he died, about 80 completed sheets were made.

One aspect of Prechtl's artistic work since the mid-1950s was the preoccupation with ceramic work. For the opening of the Nuremberg toy museum in 1971, he created the Gockelreiter in the tradition of the Nuremberg small fountains .

While Prechtl had already achieved a high level of awareness among the general public in Germany through his clear position- taking work and two TV productions by ZDF under the direction of Heinz Dieckmann , he experienced his international breakthrough in 1971 when the New York Times published a portrait of Willy Brandt on him ordered. A total of 45 drawings were published by the sheet by 1977. The portraits depict personalities from contemporary events from Richard Nixon to Idi Amin , from Golda Meir to Charles Manson, as well as historical figures from Anton Chekhov to Buffalo Bill . In Germany, orders for almost a dozen Spiegel covers followed . Usually up to seven drafts from different graphic artists are commissioned for a mirror title, one of which is selected. Prechtl was the exception: he was always the only one called and published.

In 1972 Prechtl got his first illustration assignment for a book from the Gutenberg Book Guild . It was about The Bavarian Decameron of the uncompromising pacifist Oskar Maria Graf , the "cosmopolitan from Bavaria" . It began at a time when the illustrated book was in crisis after its prime during the Art Nouveau period . During this time, which was hostile to illustration, Prechtl painted pictures for literary texts, unconcerned about the supposed distance from the art of the time and unaffected by criticism. His work was relocated, understood and bought by people. With very few exceptions, he himself chose the subjects and the books for which he painted his pictures. They were works of world literature. Prechtl tried "not to make what was written, but rather parallel to it, to make visible what was unwritten, merely hinted at, hidden between the lines" . He painted what he experienced as a reader and contemporary, and the pictures are often full of allusions to current events. By 1999, the book guild's orders totaled a good dozen.

In 1987, the Nuremberg City Council Prechtl gave the trust contract to develop draft for the painting of the historic Town Hall hall . But when he presented his designs to the public in 1989, there were massive attacks and Prechtl withdrew his work.

With his posters Prechtl had also always provoked and repeatedly provoked protests. His poster for the exhibition The Oktoberfest - One Hundred and Seventy-Five Years of Bavarian National Rush in the Munich City Museum caused a stir and the ascension of a corpse of water to Ludwig II met with criticism from monarchist associations. But his poster work was shown in a traveling exhibition of the Goethe Institute from 1995 to 2000 around the world under the title A Critical Monument .

He was a member of the artist group Der Kreis .

After a long illness, Michael Mathias Prechtl died in Nuremberg in 2003. He is buried in the Katharinenfriedhof in Amberg.

About Michael Mathias Prechtl

The entire Prechtl estate, such as paintings, drawings and graphics, was given to the Amberg City Museum on permanent loan in October 2015. The city of Amberg has therefore dedicated a permanent exhibition area to the artist in the city museum since April 2016.

“A portraitist who, which cannot be said of every portraitist, produces very intelligent images. He has a very keen eye for the characteristic, the remarkable of a character and he brings it out ... Yes, he is unique ... "

- Marcel Reich-Ranicki : The full life in art , radio feature / BR , April 21, 1996

“… I am amused by his liveliness and his sharp, apt wit and his thousand humor as well as his portraits and cityscapes. Max Liebermann's joke has been praised, but in Liebermann's pictures you don't notice anything of his joke. On the other hand, you can feel Prechtl's joke even in his landscapes. "

- Hermann Kesten : (From a letter, 1982)

Awards

Exhibitions

  • 1952 Participation in the exhibition Eisen und Stahl in Düsseldorf
  • 1955 Participation in the exhibition Colored Graphics in Hanover and ten German museums (again involved in 1957)
  • 1958 Participation in the exhibition Awakening to Modern Art in Munich
  • 1959 In the Art Exhibition of the National Olympic Committee Sports in Art
  • 1960 Exhibition of ceramics in Nuremberg
  • 1963 Participation in the large art exhibition in Munich in the Haus der Kunst
  • 1965 Solo exhibition in the Neue Münchner Galerie
  • 1966 Participation in the exhibition Pictures about Bertolt Brecht in the Neue Münchner Galerie
  • 1967 Organization of the exhibition ars phantastica in Stein Castle
  • 1968 Participation in the exhibition Fantastic Art in Germany in Hanover
  • 1968 Participation in the Autumn Arts Festival in Bromsgrave, England
  • 1968 Conception and organization of the Cranach and Picasso exhibition
  • 1970 Participation in the Third International Poster Biennale in Warsaw
  • 1971 Organization of the exhibition Posada and Mexican prints
  • 1971 Conception and organization of the exhibition in honor of Albrecht Dürer in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum
  • 1972 Solo exhibition in Antwerp
  • 1973 Participation in the traveling exhibition Art of the Times in Bordeaux, Paris, New York a. a.
  • 1975 Solo exhibition in the State Graphic Collection in Munich
  • 1978 Exhibition of the drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy in Stuttgart
  • 1979 Participation in the 1st Biennale of European Graphics in Heidelberg
  • 1980 Participation in the International Print Biennale Norway in Fredrikstad
  • 1981 Solo exhibition in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg
  • 1981 Participation with three works in the first official FRG art exhibition in Havana, Cuba
  • 1983 exhibition at the Goethe-Institut New York
  • 1986 Exhibition with over three hundred works under the title Monumenterei in the Munich City Museum
  • 1987 Participation in the exhibition Effetto Arcimboldo in Venice
  • 1989 exhibitions in Palermo, Naples, Rome and Trieste
  • 1989 Participation in the exhibition 1789/1989 - Two Hundred Years of the French Revolution in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin
  • 1996 Exhibition Michael Mathias Prechtl: The illustrated books in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg
  • 1997 Exhibition of the pictures for ETA Hoffmann's cat Murr in Bamberg
  • 1997 Exhibition of the pictures from Thomas More's Utopia in Duisburg
  • 1998 Twelve character portraits for the German House in New York
  • 2001 Prechtl's World Theater in Nuremberg
  • 2001 Exhibition in the Zeughaus (Berlin)
  • 2008 Exhibition Michael Mathias Prechtl - poster art and book illustration on the 5th anniversary of death in Unterschleissheim
  • 2010 Solo exhibition in the Lutz gallery with the blue door (Nuremberg)
  • 2011 Solo exhibition in the Jacobsa Gallery (Nuremberg)
  • 2011 Solo exhibition in the Stadtgalerie Alte Feuerwache (Amberg) "Retrospective on 85th birthday"
  • since 2016 permanent exhibition in the Amberg City Museum

Catalogs

  • Christoph Stölzl (Ed.): Michael Mathias Prechtl: Denkmalereien. The intimate moral and cultural history of the West. Dürer's suite. Heads and faces. Public images. Pictures to read. CJ Buchner, Munich and Lucerne 1986, ISBN 3-7658-0510-6 .

Illustrated books (selection)

Monographs and graphic books with works by Prechtl

  • Drawings, watercolors, gouaches, lithographs from the years 1955 to 1970. Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern 1971 (exhibition catalog).
  • Dutch travel sketchbook. Hans Carl Verlag, Nuremberg 1974, ISBN 3-418-00438-5 .
  • Pictures and drawings 1956–1981. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-7632-2587-0 .
  • Character pictures. Harenberg Verlag, Dortmund 1983, ISBN 3-88379-415-5 .
  • Art pieces. DTV, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-423-10173-3 .
  • The art of SPIEGEL. (partly Michael Mathias Prechtl).
  • Caricature: European contemporary artists. Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Hanover 1983, ISBN 3-423-10173-3 (partly Michael Mathias Prechtl).
  • Prechtl's World Theater: Pictures and Drawings on History and Literature 1958–2000. Edition Minerva, Wolfratshausen 2001, ISBN 3-86102-116-1 (Ed. Kai Artinger).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Large art exhibition Munich 1963 , Süddeutscher Verlag Munich, official exhibition catalog 1963 (p. 21; ill. P. 48).
  2. ^ Christian Jooss-Bernau: The picture for the story. Amberg received the estate of the painter Michael Mathias Prechtl. The city museum is now dedicating a permanent exhibition to him. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . September 7, 2016, accessed September 16, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Prechtl, Michael Mathias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, illustrator and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH On the mountain
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 2003
Place of death Nuremberg