Otto Butterlin

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Otto Butterlin (born December 26, 1900 in Cologne , † May 21, 1956 in Ajijic , Mexico ) was a German-Mexican chemist and painter . He is one of the most important Mexican expressionist painters.

Life

Butterlin was the eldest son of the engineer Hans Butterlin (1870-1958) and his wife Amalie Fredericke nee. Utecht (1881-1960). With Otto and his two-year-old brother Friedrich, their parents emigrated to Jalisco in 1907 . In Guadalajara (Mexico) the father founded a sugar refinery . The third son Ernesto (1917–1964) was born there.

Rhineland

Otto and Friedrich were given into the care of their grandparents Utecht in Lohmar in 1910 . With the one-year certificate he left the royal high school on the market in Siegburg . He served as a one year old volunteer with the 1st Guards Regiment on Foot . With this regiment he probably experienced the end of the First World War; because he was able to matriculate (without high school diploma) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität for Chemistry. This was made possible by the decree of the Prussian Ministry of Culture of February 9, 1919. According to this, combatants could study without a high school diploma if they had been transferred to the lower class prior to their military service . In the Corps Rhenania Bonn , he was on April 9, 1919 admittiert and on November 2, 1919 recipiert . On March 19, 1920 inactivated , he moved to the University of Marburg in order in the Corps Hasso Nassovia to become active. From the winter semester of 1920/21 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . He spent the last semester in Berlin. This is where Ixtaccihuatl , the verse legend of the mountain of the sleeping woman , originated . It revolves around the destruction of the Aztec Empire by the conquistadors and Butterlin has been familiar with it since childhood. Illustrated by Butterlin himself with his own woodcuts, the little book was published by Alfred Richard Meyer .

Sugar in mexico

After the summer semester of 1922 he returned to Mexico. In Crockett (California) ("Sugartown") he was the plant manager of a cane sugar factory for six months every year. He spent the remaining months traveling or with his parents at the hacienda "El Cabezon" in Guadalajara .

In Oakland , he married on June 7, 1929 the divorced Margaret (Peggy) Elaine Anglin (1906-1982), manager of a beauty salon in Berkeley. In 1930 he worked in Los Mochis , which in Sinaloa was also a center of Mexico's sugar production. There the daughter Rita Elaine (1931-2016) was born. She remained the only child of Otto and Peggy. In the years 1934–1940 they traveled to the United States several times a year . Naturalized in 1938 , Otto worked as a chemist for Bayer AG in Mexico City in the early 1940s . Here he could also live his artistic inclinations. At the same time he carried out chemical tests on artists' paints and was in close contact with the artist scene. Appreciated by painters, he supported distressed and sick artists, not least through the generous provision of Bayer drugs that were difficult to obtain, as the Mexican artist Inés Amor (1912–1980) reports in her memoir.

Painter in Ajijic

In 1945 Otto decided to turn away from chemistry and management. He just wanted to work as an artist. In September 1945 he settled in Ajijic. The family was wealthy there. Otto set up a studio in a Huerto . His brothers also came to Ajijic, Friedrich as a photographer and Ernesto as a painter. Located on picturesque Lake Chapala , Ajijic attracted many artists and writers, including Ernest Hemingway , Norman Mailer and DH Lawrence . From 1948 Otto and his brother Friedrich ran a restaurant and art gallery in Ajijic, called El Tejaban, which was visited by numerous celebrities from the Chapala artist colony. Otto and his brothers presented their work there. Butterlin's work has also been featured repeatedly in exhibitions in Mexico City and abroad. The Tajeban building from the late 19th century still exists today. Otto is said to have had a maitresse in Ajijic as early as the 1940s . She was then married to his - gay - brother Ernesto pro forma. Butterlin's life ended with a night shot in the head from his own Luger pistol ; the suicide declared by the police is doubtful because of the firing channel .

His works show Otto not only as a accomplished expressionist painter , but also as a graphic artist who made numerous linocuts and woodcuts . He has also experimented with stylistic elements from old, pre-Columbian Mexico. He participated in art exhibitions in Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands and the United States. He curated solo exhibitions in Mexico from November 1942 to February 1943.

Publications

  • Ixtaccihuatl. The Aztec Legend of the Sleeping Woman's Mountain . Berlin 1921. GoogleBooks

literature

  • Hans-Reinhard Koch 3 : Otto Butterlin (1900–1956) Rhenaniae, Hasso-Nassoviae: chemist, sugar manufacturer and artist . News from Rhenania in Bonn, No. 121 (September 2018).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Otto Butterlin's life between the worlds. Mysterious end in the artist colony (siegburg.de)
  2. ↑ Haenisch: Issuing the secondary school leaving certificate without taking the final examination ... In: Zentralblatt for the entire teaching administration in Prussia. JG Cotta, Berlin 1919, p. 350 1919
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 12/750; 99/995.
  4. ^ Klaus Vassel: Corpsgeschichte der Hasso-Nassovia zu Marburg 1839–1954 , Part II, No. 995. Marburg 1981, p. 311.
  5. ^ Ronald Hilton: Who's Who in Latin America , Part I: Mexico . Stanford University Press 1971, p. 16
  6. ^ Jorge Alberto Manrique, Teresa del Conde: Una mujer en el arte mexicano. Memorias de Inés Amor . Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico 1987, ISBN 970-32-2185-8 , p. 191
  7. ↑ Hans Vollmer : Butterlin, Otto , in: General Lexicon of the Visual Artists of the XX. Century , Vol. 5. EA Seemann, Leipzig (1961), pp. 354-355
  8. ↑ Hans Otto Butterlin (eArt.de)
personal data
SURNAME Butterlin, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Butterlin, Hans Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Mexican painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1956
Place of death Ajijic , Mexico