Robert Koehler (painter)
Robert Koehler , born as Robert Köhler (born November 28, 1850 in Hamburg , † April 23, 1917 in Minneapolis ) was a German-American painter .
Life
Koehler emigrated with his parents to Milwaukee in the United States during his childhood . After his education at the German-English Academy of Peter Engelmann in Milwaukee, today's University School of Milwaukee , he settled for lithographers trained and worked in Pittsburgh and New York City . In 1873 he moved to Munich to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts . Since his financial means were exhausted in 1875, he temporarily returned to the USA. Four years later he moved to Munich again, where he was a student in the painting classes of Ludwig von Löfftz and Franz Defregger . In 1888 he began to work for a private art school in Munich. In 1892 Koehler returned to New York and worked there as a portrait artist. A year later he took over from Douglas Volk as director of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts . There he worked as a painter, art teacher and arranged exhibitions until he died of a heart attack at the age of 66.
His most famous painting The Strike (1886) can be seen in the German Historical Museum in Berlin . Against the background of smoking factory chimneys, the strike shows a group of workers on strike who “confidently present their demands” to the manufacturer. The picture indicates a situation that could be on the verge of a violent confrontation. Koehler exhibited the picture painted in Munich for the first time at the spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1886 . There it was described by the critics as the best exhibit: It had a current reference to the political situation, as the strike waves began in the USA in the spring of 1886 , which culminated in the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in early May . The strike developed into an icon of the labor movement .
His picture The Socialist from 1885 is considered the first portrait of a socialist politician. The pictures Head of an Old Woman from 1881, Rainy Evening on Hennepin Avenue (1902) and Portrait of Alvina Roosen (1906) were in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts issued.
Web links
- "The Socialist" (1885) by Robert Koehler
- Hennepin County Historical Society: Robert Koehler: Artist in Milwaukee (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The strike description in the inventory database of the German Historical Museum, accessed on September 27, 2018.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Koehler, Robert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Köhler, Robert (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 28, 1850 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 23, 1917 |
| Place of death | Minneapolis |