Ottmar Begas

Ottmar Begas (born May 10, 1878 in Rome , † June 16, 1931 in Naples ) was a German painter and portraitist.

Live and act

Ottmar Begas came from the Berlin artist family Begas. He was the son of the sculptor Carl Begas the Elder. J. (Berlin 1845–1916 Koethen) and Anna von Behr. He was the grandson of the Prussian court painter Carl Joseph Begas the Elder. Ä. (1794-1854).

After his childhood in Köthen (Anhalt) and Kassel , Ottmar Begas embarked on an artistic career at an early age. He began his first drawing studies with his father as a teenager, which he continued for a short time in 1898 with the painter Franz von Lenbach (1836–1904) in Munich. It stands to reason that his father and his uncle, the sculptor Reinhold Begas (1831–1911) made contact with Lenbach, as they knew each other through a study visit to Rome and through a joint teaching activity at the art school in Weimar .

This short training period in Munich was followed by a trip to Texas in 1900 and a trip to East Asia lasting several months in 1901. Ottmar Begas then lived as a portrait painter and draftsman in Berlin, interrupted by further trips to Italy and Mexico. During these years, in addition to ethnological studies, portraits of numerous personalities from the art and literature of the early 20th century were created, including portraits of Maxim Gorki. But he also captured some of his contemporaries in drawings and caricatures on the marble table tops of the Berlin "Café des Westens", where he occasionally frequented (Ernst Pauly, 20 years Café des Westens - memories from Kurfürstendamm, Berlin 1913/14).

Begas was based in Bremen from 1919 to 1921. With his second wife Marie geb. Alberti he lived from 1921 to 1925 in the Villa Alberti in Goslar and finally left Germany with her to settle permanently in Italy, in Naples and on Capri. Ottmar Begas died on June 16, 1931, in Naples by suicide.

Ottmar Begas mainly worked as a portraitist. The influence of his teacher Lenbach remained clearly visible in his work, regardless of the short training period. For Begas personally, however, the portrait painter Hans Holbein the Elder belongs. J. (1497–1543) among his most important artistic models. Holbein's realistic works found his greatest interest and stimulated his artistic creation.

With a study visit to Japan, Ottmar Begas tried to free himself from the traditional ties of academic historicism. Like many of his modern artist colleagues at the end of the century, he studied Japanese painting, in particular the arrangement of colors in surfaces and natural coloring without perspective or light-dark contrasts, as well as the technique of watercolors. Nevertheless, he preferred the use of pastel or chalk in his subsequent work and rarely painted in watercolor or oil.

Ottmar Begas showed in his paintings and drawings that the artistic legacy of the family still lived on in the third generation.

Works

The BEGAS HAUS, Museum of Art and Regional History Heinsberg preserves the artist's artistic estate with around 200 pastel chalk drawings and oil paintings.

literature

• Irmgard Wirth: The Begas family of artists in Berlin , published by the Berlin Museum, Berlin 1968
• Rita Müllejans-Dickmann : Lingering in the tropical. The East Asian journey of the painter Ottmar Begas in 1901. Exhibition catalog Kreismuseum Heinsberg, Heinsberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-925620-26-3

Web links

• Biographical website

swell

BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg, Marie Alberti-Bega's estate

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Portrait of Marie Begas and biographical information  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.