Wilhelm Beindorf

Walter Hermann Wilhelm Beindorf (born March 29, 1887 in Suhlendorf ; † March 22, 1969 in Marktleuthen ) was a German painter who worked in the 20th century, but whose work , which was committed to impressionism , was largely forgotten after his death. Beindorf worked and worked internationally, commissioned work took him to today's Romania, among other places .

Artistic beginnings

Herman Wilhelm Beindorf was born on March 29, 1887 in Suhlendorf, the son of a businessman. At the age of 15 he began a three-year training course with Professor Bruno Wiese, the court painter to Carl Eduard Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha . In 1905 Beindorf went to the art academy in Berlin and later to Munich. Beindorf remained true to the Impressionist style in his works and worked figuratively throughout his life. Already at the age of 23 he showed his first artistic successes at home and abroad. In 1914, Beindorf was busy with portraits in Riga when the First World War broke out. As a result, it was no longer possible for him to return to Germany; he was interned in Siberia. When the war ended, Wilhelm Beindorf began working as a freelance artist in Berlin. There he married his wife Isolde.

Orders in Transylvania

Shortly after the war, Beindorf was able to build on his early successes, and foreign clients also knocked on him again. In addition to a number of other large commissions, Beindorf was the guest of a Romanian MP from 1922 to 1925 at Chiuza Castle in Transylvania , where he decorated three Romanian churches with frescoes and ceiling paintings as part of a commissioned work.

Berlin: international exhibitions

As a board member of the “ Juryfrei Kunstschau Berlin. Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Juryfrei e. V. ”- to which Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer also belonged and who advocated successfully exhibiting and marketing works of art, regardless of their direction - Beindorf had numerous exhibitions in Berlin as early as the early 1920s, but also internationally Example in Cairo, Stockholm, Venice or Buenos Aires. The city of Exin in the province of Posen (Kcynia, Poland) placed his last foreign contract with him during the Second World War . There he was supposed to give the newly built town hall an artistic design. However, since Wilhelm Beindorf was still drafted for military service at the age of 50, he was no longer able to finish the job.

Stay in Hawaii

At the end of the war, Beindorf and his family came to the Bavarian town of Marktleuthen as a displaced person . The post-war years made a new artistic start difficult at first and so he gave lectures at the adult education center, gave drawing lessons and showed his pictures in numerous exhibitions. During this time, from 1946 to 1948, he also gave Rudi Tröger , now professor emeritus at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , free painting lessons. In 1955, Wilhelm Beindorf and his wife followed their only daughter and her American husband to Hawaii . Life and nature inspired Beindorf to create numerous colorful works, including his most famous painting today, the "shell blower" made in Hawaii.

Beindorf had already joined the Freemasons in 1948 . After his return from Hawaii in 1962, he created his cycle of pictures for Friedrich Nietzsche's work “ Also sprach Zarathustra ” on behalf of the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodges of Germany . Beindorf died on March 22, 1969 in Marktleuthen.

Literature / sources

• Udo W. Acker: Wilhelm Beindorf. A forgotten artist and his missing work. In: Der Schlern 11/2008, pp. 88–95 *
• Christian Wiechel-Kramüller : Wilhelm Beindorf - the forgotten artist. In: Wipperau-Kurier 1/2010, p. 13
• Dankmar Trier: Beindorf, Wilhelm (Walter Hermann Wilhelm) . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 8, Saur, Munich a. a. 1993, ISBN 3-598-22748-5 , p. 335.
• Beindorf, Wilhelm . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 159 .

Web links

• Biography on the website of the community of Suhlendorf
• http://www.informationen-bilder.de/wilhelm-beindorf/