Thomas Georg Driendl

Thomas Georg Driendl (portrait)

Thomas Georg Driendl (born April 2, 1849 in Munich ; † February 1916 in Niterói , RJ, Brazil) was a German-Brazilian painter , architect , interior designer , restorer and art teacher. As a painter, he dealt with landscapes, portraits, genre scenes and religious subjects.

Life

Youth and Studies

Thomas Georg Driendl was the son of the lithographer Thomas Driendl (1805-1859) and Maria Anna Driendl from the municipality of Pfronten in the Allgäu. In 1873 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. As a participant in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the painter met Johann Georg Grimm (1846–1887) and became friends with him. After he entered the class of antiquities at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown in May 1873 , it can be assumed that he received his training from the most important masters of his time.

Beginning in Brazil

Driendl came to Brazil in June 1881 with the French steamship “Equateur” and in October of the same year traveled on to Santos in the then province of São Paulo , where he assumed the position of General Representative for South America at the Munich Institute for Religious Painting by the sculptor Franz Xaver Rietzler took over. Back in Rio de Janeiro, he took up residence on Rua do Senador Cassiano, 39, in the Santa Teresa district, where Johann Georg Grimm and Michael Allgaier , another Bavarian painter, also lived at the time.

Family scene from the Bavarian mountains 1878

From 1882 on, he traveled frequently to São Paulo, where, in addition to representing the institute, he also offered his work as an architect, painter and decorator. Later that year he presented his work to the public for the first time at the art exhibition exposição da Sociedade Propagadora das Belas Artes in the Imperial Liceu de Artes e Ofícios in Rio de Janeiro. On this occasion he had great success with his family scene in the Bavarian mountains, painted in his homeland in 1878. Since then he has been considered a remarkable artist and in 1882 - together with Grimm - was commissioned to decorate the interior of the Hall of Honor of the Academy of Portuguese Literature; the building later fell victim to a fire. In 1883 he created three glass paintings with sacred motifs for the stained glass windows of São Francisco de Paula in Rio de Janeiro. In 1884 he took part in the Exposição Geral , which the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts ( Academia Imperial das Belas Artes AIBA ) organized in Rio de Janeiro and where his portrait of the Brazilian journalist and politician Antônio Ferreira Viana was awarded the first gold medal.

O Grupo Grimm

View of the Bay of Rio 1888

In the same year he went with Johann Georg Grimm and his students Antônio Parreiras , Giovanni Battista Castagneto , Domingo García y Vásquez , Hipólito Boaventura Caron , Joaquim José da França Júnior and Francisco Joaquim Gomes Ribeiro , who later became known as ( o Grupo Grimm ), to Niterói and moved into a villa on Rua da Boa Viagem, 11. He worked there as Grimm's assistant until 1886, occasionally representing him in the studies of open-air painting and supporting the former students from the imperial academy until the artist group split up.

Public and private contracts

Portrait of the politician and journalist Ferreira Viana 1888

In 1888, commissioned by the city of Niterói, he was to create portraits of the most important personalities who had made a contribution to the abolition of slavery in Brazil . However, the work had to be stopped due to lack of money, as the public grants could not be raised. In October of the same year, he received the naturalization he had applied for as a Brazilian citizen.

In 1889 he created stage curtains and scene decorations for the Teatro Santa Teresa (today Teatro Municipal de Niterói) on behalf of the city council (in 1916 he was given the corresponding task again). Also as a commissioned work, he designed a commemorative medal for the liberation of slaves. In 1890 he took part in the Exposição Geral da Escola Nacional de Belas Artes exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and in 1896 he moved to Rua da Boa Viagem, 33. In the same year he worked on the altar of the Church of the Immaculate Conception of Mary ( Igreja da Imaculada Conceição de Maria ) in Botafogo . In 1895 he restored the works of art in the Igreja São Francisco da Penitência church in central Rio.

In the early years of the twentieth century he devoted himself almost exclusively to architecture, such as the renovation of the Maceió (Asilo Santa Leopoldina) in Niterói in 1904 and, three years later, also implemented the project of the ferry docks in the Bay of Guanabara , which was developed in 1904 in Rio de Janeiro and Niterói. He also carried out projects for private clients such as the old Martinelli and Custódio de Melo palaces .

The villa building later known as Residence Martinelli was designed and built between 1910 and 1914 for the banker Custódio Magalhães in the (German) neo-Gothic style . The wealthy merchant José Martinelli bought it in 1917 and had it converted from 1919 by the Italian architect Antônio Virzi . Virzi, ironically believed to be afraid of unadorned walls, gave the building an appearance over several years by constantly adding baroque elements that is similar to the works of the Catalan architect and artist Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) and that of Residence Martinelli Nicknamed the "tropical Sagrada Família ". The Residence Martinelli 1976 fell pickaxe victim.

family

Driendl Thomas died in February 1916 at the age of 67 in his home in Niterói. Even today there are descendants of the painter - among others in the field of architecture - in Rio de Janeiro and Niterói. His daughter Cecilia Driendl also painted, but never came close to the qualifications and merits of her father.

Rating

Thomas Georg Driendl presented his painting Cena de Família nas Montanhas da Baviera (family scene from the Bavarian mountains), created in Germany as early as 1878, with great success at the Brazilian art exhibition Exposição da Sociedade Propagadora das Belas Artes des Imperial Liceu de Artes e Ofícios (the Academy for Arts and Crafts) and in 1884 at the Exposição Geral of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts ( Academia Imperial das Belas Artes AIBA ) in Rio de Janeiro. The dark picture shows in the middle a dimly lit table with a crucifix hanging over it, and around the table a family in prayer.

Today, however, Driendl is less known for this type of painting. As a friend of Johann Georg Grimm (1846–1887), he carried out projects with him and temporarily replaced him as a teacher within the Grimm group in studies of free landscape painting. According to the painter and historian Quirino Campofiorito (1902–1993), the importance of Brazilian painting of seascapes in Brazil goes back to Driendl and his friend (Grimm) and his colleagues from the o Grupo Grimm. According to Campofiorito, the painter masters both technique and feeling with dry and strong contours, as can be seen in his work Vista da Baía do Rio de Janeiro (1888). He also created religious works and decorations. The art critic sees a touch of symbolism in bright colors in his religious paintings such as the Holy Virgin ( A Virgem Santíssima abençoando ) to the family of the city councilor Ferreira Vianna (1908) ( a família do conselheiro Ferreira Vianna ) .

literature

• Carlos Roberto Maciel Levy: O Grupo Grimm - Paisagismo Brasileiro no Século XIX. Edição Art Gallery. Rio de Janeiro, 1980.
• Maria Elizabete Santos Peixoto: Extraído do livro Pintores alemães no Brasil durante o século XIX . Edições Pinakotheke, Rio de Janeiro 1989, p. 187–192 (Portuguese, excerpt on Thomas Georg Driendl published by Carlos Roberto Maciel Levy [accessed May 28, 2013]).

Web links

Commons : Thomas Georg Driendl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Enciclopédia Itau cultural: Short biography Thomas Driendl Portuguese
  • Parts taken from Quirino Campofiorito (1902–1993): História da pintura brasileira . Pinakotheke, Rio de Janeiro 1983, p. 268.
• Dicinário de Artistas do Brasil: Driendl, Thomas Georg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} see short biography Thomas Driendl on Enciclopédia Itau cultural
2. ↑ ^{a b} see web link Dicinário de Artistas do Brasil
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} see literature Maria Elizabete Santos Peixoto: Extraído do livro Pintores alemães no Brasil durante o século XIX
4. ↑ ^{a b} Article in the Portuguese language Wikipedia (pt)
5. ↑ see the website of the Hopital São Francisco ( memento of the original from July 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ see article Igreja da Ordem Terceira de São Francisco da Penitência in the Portuguese language Wikipedia
7. ↑ The Residence Martinelli  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Guia da arquitettura eclética no Rio de Janeiro (English)