Rudolf Ritter (painter)
Rudolf Ritter (born May 14, 1881 in Cronenberg , † August 16, 1915 in Grubyczow , Kingdom of Poland) was a German painter and graphic artist. In the Bergisches Land he was regarded as a promising painter of German Expressionism during his lifetime .
Live and act
Rudolf Ritter was born as the son of a master craftsman from Bremen on the heights of Cronenberg. His mother's home was the Bergisches Land . When he was eight years old, his father died after only a brief illness. His mother moved to Elberfeld and married again. For the knight, who was close to nature from an early age, the move to the big city and the associated separation from nature was a serious turning point.
His artistic talent was already evident during his first school years, especially for drawing. He first completed an apprenticeship as a construction technician . A benefactor made it possible for him to attend the arts and crafts school. During this time, between 1902 and 1905, a large number of landscape drawings as well as drawings and sketches of picturesque-looking, slate-covered Bergisch houses were created . He often sketched and painted in the poor district of Elberfeld, the so-called "Iceland". Ten postcards from Alt-Elberfeld were issued based on original motifs by Ritter from the Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Heritage Protection . Ritter was one of the first members of the Bergische Kunstgenossenschaft.
The Elberfelder Museumsverein supported the twenty-one year old with a scholarship to attend the art academies in Karlsruhe and Munich . There he was a student of Max Bernuth , Wilhelm Trübner , Ludwig Schmid-Reutte and a master student of Franz von Stuck . He was in contact with the painters of the Blue Rider . A study visit to Italy followed from 1910 to 1912.
Ritter volunteered for military service at the beginning of the First World War , but was not fit for military service for health reasons and was therefore employed as a voluntary nurse at the beginning of 1915. His last work, a large figurative mural, he created within four days in the city of Radymno . During his assignment on the Eastern Front he fell ill with cholera while serving in the epidemic hospital and died a week later, on August 16, 1915 in Grubyczow, Poland. He was buried on the same day in the Grubyczow War Cemetery.
Work and public perception
Ritter mainly created paintings, drawings and etchings. He first became known for his pictures of the old Elberfeld, some of which were also published as postcards. His great role model was the painter Hans von Marées . Ritter wrote about this in a letter: "I was particularly interested in Mareés' hand drawings because I increasingly penetrate the flow of lines in his compositions, which is often very fine with Mareés." Old masters such as Thoma were also important to him, Cranach and Holbein as well as Wilhelm Steinhausen , whom he visited in Frankfurt and observed while etching. Stylistically, the development of Ritter’s works also showed a closeness to Art Nouveau and the painters Ferdinand Hodler and Heinrich Vogeler, as well as an approach to Expressionism .
In the period from 1912 to 1915, Ritter produced his most mature works. He had gone through ups and downs in his struggle for his work and remained unfinished as a painter due to his untimely death. Many of his pictures had religious and mystical motifs and on the eve of the First World War showed a dark, gloomy color scheme. As a deeply religious person who was impressed by Rudolf Steiner , anthroposophy gave him orientation in his artistic endeavors. In June 1914 he had visited the first Goetheanum that was being built in Dornach . A painting from 1912 contains the inscription on the masonry of a gate to light: “The weaving of light shines from person to person to fill the world with truth” from Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas.
“It was the Faustian striving in him to find the final formal unity, the necessity of which he felt was urgent in order to control his strong romantic talent. The strong art of the ancient Greeks, which he loves passionately, is also groundbreaking for him. ' I don't see the painterly, but the architectural in form and color. I am much more interested in Greek vase paintings than in modern light and air painting . ' In this way he finds the control of his wandering imagination, which feels harassed by hundreds of pictures that ' all want to be painted '. "
"When you see Ritter's great compositions or if you look at his self-portrait, you might think that a certain world weariness advised him to flee into those fields of fantasy that are depicted in his pictures and which are most likely to be expressed in the large painting, “You are Orplid my country!” Seem to have. But Ritter loved life, as every artist loves it who feels the strength in himself to shape it creatively. What he ultimately strived for in incessant struggle and in spite of all the repetitive artistic defeats, was the dissolution of tensions in a paradisiacal timelessness, in a wonderful human game devoted to God and nature. "
In 1915, Ritter was on the verge of becoming a famous painter beyond the Bergisches Land. The Elberfeld Municipal Museum had acquired a number of studies and etchings as well as a larger work “The Expulsion from Paradise”. He has been described, among other things, as a down-to-earth local artist, deeply rooted in the nature of the Bergisches Land, who “can simply be called the painter of the Bergisch landscape” as well as an artist of outstanding creative talent and as a “painter of rhythm and line”, whose “figurative compositions” show great monumental effect ”.
“The art historian and director of the Elberfeld Municipal Museum, Friedrich Fries, remarked in his obituary: ' What remained are precious approaches to the highest utterances, are glimpses into an almost overbearing imagination, into a deep and incessantly active intellectual life, borne by high and noble disposition . ' Even Italy, the land of longing for all painters, whose early strength he passionately embraced in several years of study, could not give him the last revelation. The most valuable insight he brought home with him from all roaming the world was the knowledge that constant closeness to nature is necessary in order to keep all strength healthy: ' I have to go to the country to live quietly face to face with nature . Because if you see the centuries with their best works spread out in front of you and look at them like someone who also wants to create something, you will become very small . ' It is the knowledge of the German painter Dürer when he writes in his diary: ' I mean, I have to find out what I have in mind from nature on my own and not take it over by some manner and thus look at nature .' "
The Elberfeld Municipal Museum had acquired the larger painting "The Expulsion from Paradise" and hung it in the foyer. It fell victim to the flames when Elberfeld was bombed in World War II . Gradually the artist was forgotten and is now a completely unknown painter to the public. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung paid tribute to Ritter on the 100th anniversary of his death in 2015 with an article in his memory.
The holdings of the Von der Heydt Museum in Elberfeld now include numerous works by Ritter: around 20 paintings, 26 drawings and 120 etchings.
Posthumous exhibitions
- probably autumn 1915: memorial exhibition, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum , Elberfeld
- July 1936, exhibition of Ritterscher Werke, Museum Elberfeld
- February 2012, first exhibition by Rudolf Ritter, Pauluskirche, Wangen, Allgäu
Web links
- Information about Rudolf Ritter on the website of Christoph Klipstein
Individual evidence
- ^ The West German Impulse 1900–1914: Urban Development, Collections, Exhibitions . Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 1984 ( google.de [accessed January 25, 2020]).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Westdeutsche Zeitung: Taken away by cholera. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rudolf Ritter, the painter of the Bergisch homeland in memory . Exhibition of works by the painter in the Kaiser Wilhem Museum Elberfeld in 1915.
- ↑ a b c d General-Anzeiger Elberfeld-Barmen of August 21, 1915
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Life picture of a Bergisch painter . In: Wuppertaler Zeitung of July 26, 1936 (Author: CR Sch.)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ritter, Rudolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1881 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cronenberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 16, 1915 |
| Place of death | Grubyczow, Poland |