Otto Sohn-Rethel

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Otto Sohn-Rethel, around 1900 by Gustav Wendling

Otto Wilhelm Sohn-Rethel (born January 18, 1877 in Düsseldorf , † June 7, 1949 in Anacapri ) was a German painter , entomologist , botanist and collector.

Life

Art for All 1918/19

Otto Wilhelm Sohn-Rethel was born on January 18, 1877 in Düsseldorf as the second son of the painter Karl Rudolf Sohn and Else Sohn-Rethel . He was given the first name "Otto Wilhelm" after his great uncles, the painters Otto Rethel and Wilhelm Sohn .

He and his older brother Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1875–1958) were often in the care of their grandmother Marie Rethel (1832–1895), the widowed wife of the history painter Alfred Rethel , with stays in Loschwitz in the summer house of his great-grandfather August Grahl . Wherever he could, he drew and painted. He practiced watercolor and drawing with animal studies from the zoological garden, ornamental designs and caricatures. The family modeled him. When he was around 14 years old, his great-uncle Adolf Stengel asked him to come and see him in Heidelberg, where he made a life-size portrait of him.

Inspired by his uncle Erich Hettner (1868–1933), Otto's passion for butterflies began in the summer of 1883 . He caught the animals, stretched them and arranged them according to the species in the sense of the collector. Equipped with butterfly nets in 1889, he discovered a particularly rare type of blood drop in the Horbistal, a side valley of the Engelberg valley in Switzerland . His collection was noticeably enriched with rare pieces.

Despite his natural scientific talents, he expressed the wish to come from school to the Academy of Arts, which he succeeded according to templates. Studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , initially in the elementary class of 1890 Heinrich Lauenstein , in 1891 in the middle class of Hugo Crola and ornamentation class of Adolf Schill , from 1892 to 1893 in the Antiquities and natural class of Peter Janssen the Elder followed, a study visit to the Académie Julian in Paris . From 1895 to 1897, Sohn-Rethel stayed temporarily in the Worpswede artists' colony . There he was friends with Otto Modersohn , Hans am Ende , Fritz Overbeck and in particular with Fritz Mackensen and Heinrich Vogeler , with whom he lived in the Barkenhoff. Around 1901 he lived in Sint Anna ter Muiden in Holland , where some artists had settled, including Paul Baum and Ernst Oppler . This is where the picture Dutch farmers was created , which was shown at the German national art exhibition in the Kunstpalast in 1902 .

He collected writings and paintings from the Far East , China and the Japanese Empire, and in particular Mughal paintings, and became an expert on Indian miniatures .

The myth of Italy attracted him, and around 1902 Otto Sohn-Rethel went to Rome , then Frascati and finally in 1905 to Anacapri . There he spent his time with commissioned portrait painting and in particular with body studies of bathing, wrestling or lazing young naked men, inspired by the young Giovanni Tessitore , who was his student. He used hikes on the slopes of Monte Solaro for field studies and catching butterflies . In Rome he had a studio in the Villa Strohl-Fern . His friend Heinrich Vogeler spent Christmas 1902 and early 1903 on his trip to Italy in his studio in the “Studio al Ponte”. In the winter of 1903/1904 he left the studio to Rainer Maria Rilke . Here he soon met his brother Karli Sohn-Rethel , who had just finished his training, as well as his future brother-in-law and friend Werner Heuser , the painter Karl Hofer and the sculptor Hermann Haller .

In January 1906 Otto Sohn-Rethel was elected extraordinary (corresponding) member of the Berlin Secession . In 1908 he teamed up with six like-minded former students of the Academy, Julius Bretz , Max Clarenbach , August Deusser , Walter Ophey , Wilhelm Schmurr and his brother Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and organized the first special exhibition in the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle . Like his father Karl Rudolf Sohn and his older brother Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Otto Sohn-Rethel was a member of the German Association of Artists . As early as 1904 he took part in the first exhibition made possible by the secessionists in the Royal Art Exhibition Building on Königplatz in Munich, where he was represented with two pastel drawings and an oil painting.

In 1909 the Sonderbund group was founded . In 1919 he became a member of the group Das Junge Rheinland .

During the First World War , stationed in Düsseldorf, Otto Sohn-Rethel painted all facets of war-wounded soldiers who were released from the hospital . In addition to a precise description of the type of injury, the details of the wounded person were entered on each picture.

Otto Sohn-Rethel now settled in Anacapri . At the beginning of the 20th century, his house, the Villa Lina , was a center for the foreign community and intellectuals, a meeting place and contact point for Düsseldorf's cultural circles, as well as for German avant-garde art . On the first floor of the villa there was a gallery for exhibitions of passing artists. A clique emerged in exile , to which Hans Paule , Walter Depas and the painter Benjamin Vautier the Younger (1895–1974) belonged. Exceptions were the painter Raffaele Castello and the naive painter Rosina Viva , whose imagery can be related to the influence of Sohn-Rethel and who came from Capri . He kept returning to Düsseldorf to his family and also to Rome.

In 1943 he registered his Villa Lina in Anacapri on his former Caprese domestic servant and friend in order to avoid confiscation. After the end of the war, the latter refused to refund the money and worsened the situation by embezzling a number of paintings, drawings and parts of his collections. Otto was taken in by his friend Hans Berg (1886–1964), an industrialist from Solingen-Ohligs, in his villa, where he died in 1949. He was buried in the Anacapri cemetery.

plant

Otto Sohn-Rethel, study, pencil and red chalk on paper, ca.1929

In addition to the influence originating in the Düsseldorf School and the paintings by Hans von Marées , which he had admired in the Naples zoological station , modern expressionism was reflected in his work through the stretching of drawings in pencil or red chalk technique. The quality of his painting lay in capturing what Matisse called the "essential line," and this feature was particularly evident in the studies. In his drawings, the lines of the central figures appeared in the shoulders and neck, with a play of light on the back, while the buttocks and thighs had a stronger focus. The paintings are not really naturalistic, but an allusion to the imagination that show the freshness of the nudity.

Otto Sohn-Rethel, From the caterpillar to the butterfly , ca.1910

But he was not only a painter, but also a collector and lepidopterist . A number of butterflies was the destination name sohnretheli or sohnretheli named. According to the curator of the collection / exhibition Silke Stoll, the collection of the Aquazoo - Löbbecke Museum contains a total of 60 specimens of 18 different butterfly species that were verifiably collected by Otto Sohn-Rethel in Italy between 1902 and 1912. These were integrated into the collection of another collector, which was and is not unusual, but common practice.

" Tapinostola son-retheli [...] by Mr. Otto Sohn-Rethel, whom I am naming the species in honor, caught at the end of July about 1200 m high in the Abruzzo near the lamp, both in 1902 on Gran Sasso and in 1906 on Majella . "

- Rudolf Püngeler

In Italy he was also called the Farfallaro of Anacapri , his family Papillotto (from French Papillon for butterfly).

literature

  • James Money: Capri: Island of Pleasure. Faber & Faber, 2012, ISBN 978-0-571-29783-2 .
  • Claretta Cerio: The Forgotten. Otto Sohn-Rethel. In: Il Gabbiano di Capri. No. 54 (2013), p. 37 ff.
  • Son-Rethel, Otto. In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. Volume 4: QU. EA Seemann, Leipzig 1999 (study edition), ISBN 3-363-00730-2 , p. 312.
  • 100 years of the artists' association Malkasten Düsseldorf. Exhibition catalog, 1966.
  • Esperiana. (= Book series on entomology. Volume 11). Schwanfeld, 2005, ISBN 3-938249-01-3 , pp. 93-205.
  • SwissLepTeam: The butterflies (Lepidoptera) of Switzerland: A commented, systematic faunistic list. In: Fauna Helvetica. 25. Neuchâtel (CSCF & SEG) 2010. 159, no. 9976 (as Chortodes sonretheli).
  • Son-Rethel, Otto . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 31 : Siemering – Stephens . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1937, p. 217 .
  • Illustration of a Dutch boy, Otto Sohn-Rethel. In: The Rhineland . 1901–1902, issue 3, p. 51 ( uni-heidelberg.de ).
  • Wilhelm Schäfer : Otto son-Rethel. In: The Rhineland. Issue 6, 1903, pp. 240-242 ( uni-heidelberg.de ).
  • Otto Sohn-Rethel. In: The Rhineland. 1904, issue 8, pp. 314 and 316 ( uni-heidelberg.de ).
  • Great Berlin art exhibition. In: Art for everyone: painting, sculpture, graphics, architecture. Issue 34, 1918-1919 ( uni-heidelberg.de ).
  • German art and decoration. Issue 12, September 1927, p. 5, advertisement: Exhibition of the art association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf - October: paintings by Alfred, Otto and Karli Sohn-Rethel ( library.utoronto.ca PDF).

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adolf Schill , data sheet in the rkd.nl portal , including the students ( Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie )
  2. ↑ Collection signature of the Düsseldorf Art Academy: Otto Sohn-Rethel, BR 0004 No. 1562.
  3. ↑ Son-Rethel, Otto . In: Hans Wolfgang Singer (Ed.): General Artist Lexicon. Life and works of the most famous visual artists . Prepared by Hermann Alexander Müller . tape 6 : Second addendum with corrections . Literary Institute, Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt a. M. 1922, p. 267 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ Figure Dutch farmers. In: Rhine and Düssel. No. 33. August 13, 1905, p. 3 ( uni-duesseldorf.de ).
  5. ^ Ernst Kühnel : The Indian miniatures of the Otto Sohn-Rethel collection. In: Pantheon, monthly for friends and collectors of art. 1931, issue 9, September.
  6. ↑ Extraordinary member: Sohn-Rethel, Otto, Villa Stechel-Pern (typo in the catalog, should be called Strohl-Fern). In: Catalog of the thirteenth exhibition of the Berlin Secession. 1907, p. 52 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  7. ^ Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Sohn-Rethel, Otto ( kuenstlerbund.de , accessed on February 29, 2016).
  8. ^ Exhibition catalog X. Exhibition of the Munich Secession: The German Association of Artists (in connection with an exhibition of exquisite products of the arts in the craft). Verlaganstalt F. Bruckmann, Munich 1904 (p. 31: Sohn-Rethel, Otto, Düsseldorf. Catalog No. 142–144 (all with ill.): Boy with sheep. (Oil on canvas) , Dutch farmers. Pastel drawing , Dutch woman. Pastel drawing ).
  9. ↑ Otto Sohn-Rethel, painter, Germany - with a male nude model in his studio in Rome, 1924 , image Getty Images
  10. ^ Artist at work: Otto Sohn-Rethel in Rome In: The cross section. Art print part 6, issue No. 5, 1925 ( magazine.illustrierte-presse.de ).
  11. ^ Grave site 191, Anacapri: Hans Berg (* June 15, 1886; † September 9, 1964)
  12. ^ Gebrüder Weyersberg: Hans Berg since 1922 management ( strazors.com PDF English).
  13. ↑ Tapinostola sohn-retheli , lepiforum.de
  14. ^ Rudolf Püngeler: New palaearctische Macrolepidopteren. 10. “Tapinostola sohn-retheli” In: German entomological magazine Iris. Volume XIX, year 1906, p. 222 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Son-Rethel, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sohn-Rethel, Otto Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, entomologist, botanist and collector
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1949
Place of death Anacapri