Otto Schoff

Martha - lithograph from around 1920

Siesta , watercolor

Otto Schoff: Gerdi (1929)

Otto Schoff (born May 24, 1884 in Bremen , † July 3, 1938 in Berlin ) was a German painter .

Life

Otto Schoff was officially born on May 24, 1888. According to his biographer Otto Brattskoven , he made himself exactly four years younger.

Schoff, who grew up in poor conditions, attended the arts and crafts school in Bremen from 1902 after starting his apprenticeship in a tobacco factory and with a decorative painter . The following year he was a student of Otto Linnemann in Frankfurt am Main . In 1909 Schoff passed the entrance exam for the teaching establishment of the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts . There he was a student of Emil Orlik . Schoff came to Paris in 1913 on a scholarship , which he did not leave until August 1914. His attempts to evade the draft were in vain; Schoff suffered gas poisoning on the Western Front in 1918 .

After the war , Schoff set up a studio on Motzstrasse in Berlin, which he kept until his death. After the seizure of power in 1935 it was classified as degenerate and was no longer allowed to exhibit. In 1936 he drew the comic Mucki's funny pranks for Neue Jugend magazine , which immediately followed the strip Kalle, the rascal king . In addition to 21 episodes of the comic, Schoff also created humor drawings for the New Youth . The day before his death, the Secret State Police visited his studio and confiscated many of his works.

Women, eroticism as well as male and female homosexuality are central themes in his work.

Works (selection)

painting

• Sappho or the lesbians. 1920
• Portrait of a man with a hat and a pipe. 1927, oil on canvas
• Behind the scenes. OJ, oil on canvas
• Lovers. OJ, Pen and Ink and Watercolor

Printed works

• Étienne de Jouy: Sappho or The Lesbians. With etchings by Otto Schoff. [Translated from the French by Balduin Alexander Möllhausen]. Gurlitt, Berlin 1920
• Gottfried Keller: Romeo and Juliet in the village. Narrative. With an introduction by Anna Stemsen. Book decorations by Otto Schoff. Publishing cooperative "Freiheit", Berlin 1921
• August von Platen: The condemned Eros. From the poems of Count August von Platen. [Selected,] written and lithographed by Otto Schoff. F. Gurlitt, Berlin 1921
• Joachim Ringelnatz: Driving people. Adorned with [imprinted] drypoint etchings by Otto Schoff. Gallery [A.] Flechtheim, [Düsseldorf] 1922
• Ernst Wenger: Bacchanals of love. Verses. With 7 etchings by Otto Schoff. Reuss & Pollack, Berlin 1922
• The Wannseebad. [With a foreword by Hans Siemsen]. Gallery [A.] Flechtheim, [Düsseldorf] [1922]
• Albius Tibullus: The Book of Marathus. Elegies of love for boys. German adaptation by Alfred Richard Meyer. [5 rad. Plate by Otto Schoff]. Gurlitt, Berlin 1928
• Otto Schoff. (1884-1938). Gallery Taube, Berlin
  • [1]. Pictures, graphics & books. May 6–25. June 1983. 1983
  • (2). A gleaning. January 16–14. March 1987. 1987

literature

• Otto Brattskoven : Otto Schoff. Portrait of an idyllic painter of our time. Schünemann, Bremen 1941.
• Otto Schoff. In: Hans-Joachim Manske , Birgit Neumann-Dietzsch (ed.): “Degenerate” - confiscated. Bremen artist under National Socialism. On the occasion of the exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Bremen from September 6 to November 15, 2009, Städtische Galerie Bremen, Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-938795-10-1 , pp. 120–123.
• Gerd Lettkemann: Otto Schoff's "Mucki" as a transformation of a US strip. In: Eckart Sackmann (Ed.): Deutsche Comicforschung 2009. Comicplus, Hildesheim 2008, ISBN 3-89474-190-2 , pp. 79-83.

Web links

Commons : Otto Schoff  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Otto Schoff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Otto Schoff on artnet