Richard Pietzsch

Richard Pietzsch (born March 23, 1872 in Blasewitz , † January 28, 1960 in Munich ) was a painter of German Impressionism .

biography

Richard Pietzsch, born on March 23, 1872 in Blasewitz near Dresden (incorporated into Dresden in 1921), came from a culturally committed family of teachers. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden from 1891 to 1894 and switched to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in autumn 1894 , where he first studied with Paul Hoecker and from autumn 1895 with Franz von Stuck . In 1897 Pietzsch moved into his first studio in Munich-Schwabing. In spring 1899, thanks to the support of Fritz von Uhde , he was able to show his works for the first time at the spring exhibition of the Munich Secession .

From 1900 Pietzsch received increasing recognition from the art public: regular participation in the exhibitions of the Munich Secession (of which he became a member soon after 1900), the Berlin Secession (supported by Max Liebermann and Walter Leistikow ) as well as in Germany-wide exhibitions, publication of his work, etc. a. in youth (magazine) and museum purchases. From 1903 he lived in Grünwald in the Isar valley. In 1905 the German Association of Artists awarded him one of the first year scholarships for a stay in the newly founded artist house Villa Romana in Florence , where he stayed from April 1906 to New Year's Eve 1906. In the same year he married the Swedish painter Fanny Westberg. After several months in Corsica , Pietzsch returned to Germany in the early summer of 1907, where he took over the management of the landscape class at the women's academy of the Munich Artists' Association (until 1909). In the following years he lived in Grünwald, Icking , Wolfratshausen and from 1913 back in Munich. From autumn 1915 to January 1916 he was a war painter in Laon in northern France and on the Aisne front. Paintings and drawings were created that captured civil and military life in everyday life during the First World War. From 1916 to 1930 Richard Pietzsch lived in Bad Tölz in Upper Bavaria . In 1913 he was appointed adjunct professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, followed by honorary membership in 1925. Regular painting trips took him through Upper Bavaria, Northern Germany and Sweden. In 1930 he returned to Munich when the city of Munich gave him the Asam-Schlössl (former baroque residence of the brothers Cosmas Damian Asam and Egid Quirin Asam ) in Munich-Thalkirchen on the banks of the Isar as a free apartment and studio for life. Between 1942 and 1944 Pietzsch took an active part in the Great German Art Exhibitions initiated by the National Socialists in the House of German Art , where he exhibited a total of 5 works, two of which he sold. In a bombing raid in autumn 1944, not only was the Asamschlössl badly damaged, the studio and numerous paintings were also destroyed. Pietzsch moved to an emergency studio in the small Upper Bavarian town of Beuerberg . In January 1952 he returned to Munich, where the city had again made a studio and apartment available to him in Schwabing's Franz-Joseph-Straße. He still took part in the art exhibitions in the " House of Art ". In June 1953 the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts presented the artist with an honorary gift. After 1945 he hardly painted any more because an arthritic disease in the painter's hand hindered him. He died on January 28, 1960 in Munich. A street in the Munich district of Solln has been named after him since 1962 .

Family: His wife Fanny Westberg (1874–1958) trained at the Stockholm Academy, continued to work as a painter after her marriage and exhibited together with her husband, as did their daughter Ingeborg. The son, Harald Pietzsch (killed as a soldier 1910–1944), worked as an architect and master builder in the Berchtesgadener Land. His older brother Martin Pietzsch shaped the image of the Dresden districts of Blasewitz and Loschwitz with his villas and cinema buildings . The niece Sibylle Pietzsch , dramaturge, architect, writer, married the Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy for the second time after emigrating to the USA in 1934 .

plant

To a large extent, Pietzsch's work comprises depictions of landscapes. Italian and Corsican motifs date from his Villa Romana period; However, the landscape of Sweden, which he toured repeatedly from 1904 to 1923, corresponded to his temperament. The most important source of motifs was southern Germany, where he painted in the Berchtesgadener Land, in the Altmühl and Danube valleys, on the Middle Rhine, in the Chiemgau, in Tyrol and especially in the Isar valley between Munich and the Vorkarwendel. He was particularly interested in the atmospheric changes in a landscape with the change of the seasons or the weather. His attention was not only directed towards the landscape as a topographical feature, but also its historical character. It shows the Bavarian cultural landscape with its centuries-long character by farming activities (“Munich sheep shearing”, “flax cutting”) as well as the inexorable advance of technology (“Reichsautobahnbau”, “telephone masts near Murnau”). In Tölz, Berchtesgaden or the Munich suburbs, he observed the gradual urbanization changes and captured the rural architectural heritage in his paintings. The still lifes, interiors and family scenes are a small but qualitatively important part of his work. As a tireless and trained draftsman, Richard Pietzsch also left behind a large number of charcoal drawings, watercolors and pastels that document his versatility in terms of style and motifs.

Stylistic classification

“Richard Pietzsch is a characteristic representative of Munich plein-air painting. The early works until shortly after the turn of the century still show the influence of Stuck with their clay colors and atmospheric natural motifs. Pietzsch then developed an impulsive, powerful line that did not deny its origins from French, but especially from southern German Impressionism. The vitality, sometimes almost whipping movement of the painting style is (...) comparable to the work of the Berliners Max Liebermann and Fritz von Uhde. ”(Ulrich Bischoff). In the late twenties and thirties the style calmed down in favor of a composition that balances the surfaces and a thinner, finely nuanced application of paint. Works by Richard Pietzsch can be found in the following museums, among others: Galerie Neue Meister Dresden, Villa Romana Florenz, Städel Museum Frankfurt, Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt, Stadtarchiv Halle, Neue Pinakothek Munich, Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus Munich, Munich City Museum , Oberhausmuseum Passau , History Museum Regensburg as well as owned by cities and communities in the Isar Valley.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Zils (ed.): Intellectual and artistic Munich in autobiographies . Munich 1913, p. 280
2. ↑ Thomas Föhl and Gerda Wendemann (eds.): An Arcadia of Modernity? 100 years of the Villa Romana artist house in Florence . An exhibition by the Villa Romana eV in cooperation with the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar and the Deutsche-Bank-Stiftung, Berlin 2005, p. 46 f.
3. ↑ Yvette Deseyve: The Artists Club Munich eV and its Ladies Academy. A study of the educational situation of women artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries . Munich 2005, p. 199.
4. ^ Dorle Gribl, Thomas Hinz: Life in Thalkirchen. History of a Munich district 1900-1990 . Munich 1990, p. 61.
5. ↑ [1] .
6. ^ Exhibition catalog of the Münchner Kunstverein: Richard Pietzsch on his 85th birthday in 1957 .
7. ↑ Gösta Lilja, Bror Olsson, Knut Andersson et al. (Eds.): Svensk Konstnärslexikon . Allhelms-Verlag 1952-1967, Volume 5, pp.?.
8. ^ Jeanine Fiedler:  Moholy-Magy, Sybil. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 701 f. ( Digitized version ).
9. ^ In: Bruckmanns Lexikon der Münchner Kunst: Münchner Maler im 19./20. Century . Volume 6, Munich 1994, p. 182.

literature

• Exhibition catalog: Richard Pietzsch. Painting as contemporary history. Exhibition at the gallery of Abercron Munich, 1987
• Exhibition catalog: Memorial exhibition Joseph Jaekel, Richard Pietzsch, Erich Seidel, Baukunst-Galerie des Gerling Group Cologne, 1988 (with a foreword by Günther Ott)
• Exhibition catalog: Richard Pietzsch. Catalog II. Works on paper. Exhibition at the gallery of Abercron Munich, 1992
• Exhibition catalog: Richard Pietzsch. Works on paper. Exhibition by the Les Arts Gallery, Rottach-Egern, 1993
• Peter Breuer: Munich artist heads . Munich, undated (1937), pp. 40-42
• Ulrich Christoffel: Richard Pietzsch, in: Die Kunst 87, 1943, pp. 39–45
• Walter Frei: Picturesque legacy between Isar and Loisach, Munich 2018, ISBN 9783777432120
• Wilfried Hartleb: Richard Pietzsch. A painter on the move between Vornbach and Passau. Drawings from the summer of 1929 . Catalog for the exhibition in the district gallery Passau, Castle Neuburg am Inn. Published by the district of Passau, Kulturreferat, 2015, ISBN 978-3-939723-48-6
• Friedrich Jansa: German visual artists in words and pictures . Leipzig 1912, p. 448
• Horst Ludwig : Munich landscape painting in the 19th and 20th centuries , part 17 Post and Late Impressionism , Part I: Post Impressionists . In: Weltkunst , No. 4, February 15, 1990, pp. 328–331.
• Horst Ludwig: From the Blue Rider to Freshly painted , Munich 1997, SS 127 f and p. 349
• Eugen Kalkschmidt: Richard Pietzsch . In: Westermanns Monatshefte 78, 1933/34, January issue 1929, pp. 401-408
• Richard Pietzsch: paintings. Landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes. Catalog of the Abercron Gallery. With examples of works, biography and bibliography. Download as pdf
• Juliane Roh: 50 years of painting in the Bavarian region , in: The artwork 7, 1953, pp. 3–28
• Karl Friedrich Selle: Richard Pietzsch , in: Die Kunst 27. 1913, pp. 306–312
• Georg Jacob Wolf: Richard Pietzsch , in: Art and artists in Munich. Studies and essays (= on modern art, 12th issue), Strasbourg 1908, p. 102

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Pietzsch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Richard Pietzsch  in the German Digital Library
• Biography, paintings and drawings