Otto Greiner

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Otto Greiner in 1900
Otto Greiner: Nannina Greiner, around 1905
Otto Greiner: Sirmione on Lake Garda, 1899

Otto Greiner (born December 16, 1869 in Leipzig , † September 24, 1916 in Munich ; also Ernst Otto Greiner ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

Greiner joined Julius Klinkhardt's institute in Leipzig in 1884 as an apprentice lithographer . After completing his apprenticeship, he studied under Sándor Liezen-Mayer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich between 1888 and 1891 . In 1891 he went on his first study trip to Italy , on which he met Max Klinger and made friends with him. Between 1892 and 1898 he lived in Munich and Leipzig. In 1892 he moved to Rome , where he used Max Klinger's former studio behind the Colosseum . The most famous portrait comes from this period von Greiner, which Max Klinger made by his friend in Rome in 1905.

Due to the war , he left Italy in early 1915 and continued his work in Munich until his death in 1916.

plant

Joy of Life (1915)

Otto Greiner came to painting through graphics . He was the first German artist to use the technique of lithography not only for reproduction, but also for making his own design statement. His naturalistic representations, which are typical for his epoch, are of less interest today.

According to the Greiner biographer Hans W. Singer, he created countless studies for his larger works. For his no longer completed work Triumph der Venus , which had to remain behind while fleeing Italy, he created eight life-size painted nude studies for a single secondary character. The preparatory studies for his school of witches , which are presented as a reprint in Singer's biography Masters of Drawing, volume four, were similarly complex .

His few large-format monumental paintings include: Odysseus and the Sirens , on which he worked in Rome for three years (has generally been considered lost since the Second World War ), Prometheus , Hercules at Omphale (made in 1905 in Rome), Witch School and his only cycle About the women . According to statements by contemporary witness and Greiner collector Walter Steinweden , the work Odysseus and the Sirens - from the holdings of the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts - was destroyed in 1945 during the occupation of the city by Russian troops , who simply cut the painting out of the frame in order to use it to cover a captured piano for removal. Greiner's work is based on careful graphic processing, especially the figurative representation. The act was often the focus of his work. He also created numerous portraits and treated ancient and fantastic subjects. These themes form the main part of his 112 graphic works and a few large paintings. One of these large-format works - Herkules bei Omphale - has been part of the collection of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart since the end of 2011 and is open to the public again for the first time. Greiner's last two monumental paintings, commissioned work for the newly built house of the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig, remained unfinished due to his surprising death.

literature

Web links

Commons : Otto Greiner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see Julius Vogel: Otto Greiner .
personal data
SURNAME Greiner, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Greiner, Ernst Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1916
Place of death Munich