Ernst Isselmann

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Ernst Isselmann, self-portrait, around 1913

Wilhelm Carl Ernst Isselmann (born April 29, 1885 in Rees ; † March 17, 1916 there ) was a German painter.

Life

Isselmann was born on April 29, 1885 as the son of the furniture manufacturer Conrad Johann Isselmann (1845–1913) and his wife Catharina Caroline Auguste Emilie († 1925), born. Fuchs, born in Rees on the Lower Rhine. He began his studies probably around 1904 at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf , soon moved to Dresden , where he was accepted into the painting class of Prof. Carl Bantzer (1857–1941). Isselmann made friends with Bantzer and accompanied him on various visits to the Willingshausen artists' colony not far from Kassel . There he received additional suggestions from the neo-impressionist Paul Baum (1859–1932), which were expanded into an independent form of artistic expression through extensive study trips to Berlin and Paris , where he visited museums and galleries for modern art. Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) and pointillist painting left clear traces in Isselmann's work of those years.

Ernst Isselmann, Rees in September 1908
Landscape with palm trees, Tunisia 1914
Industrial plant in Saarland, 1916

After the academic years, Isselmann moved back to his hometown on the Lower Rhine. The Rhineland had become an important center of modernity in those years that Isselmann now entered. In January 1909, Isselmann's first exhibition was held in the Schulte art salon in Düsseldorf , in which he showed 21 works. He quickly made contacts with the Cologne Modernists and the Sonderbund Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler , headed by the director of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum , Rudolf Hagelstange (1874-1914), and at whose exhibition in Cologne in 1912 he was represented with various works.

Isselmann was considered an interested, informed and lively artist. He had a close, friendly and collegial relationship with the Cologne painter Franz M. Jansen (1885–1958). When Jansen, after disputes with the Kölner Künstlerbund, together with August Deusser (1870–1942) a. a. Founded the Cölner Secession in spring 1910 , Isselmann joined it and was also represented with works at the two exhibitions in 1912 and 1913.

Jansen and Isselmann became studio neighbors in the bridge tower of the Homberger Bridge in Ruhrort-Homberg. There they worked together from May to September 1913 on a graphic portfolio for the workers at House Nyland , which led to a large number of works on the industrial and working worlds. Through Jansen, Isselmann also got to know the painter Johannes Greferath (1872–1946), who occasionally - mostly with Jansen - visited Isselmann.

In the winter of 1913/14 Isselmann founded with Werner Heuser (1880–1964), Hans Dornbach (1885–1952) a. a. the Rheinische Künstlervereinigung, based in Cologne , which organized a first exhibition in January 1914 in the premises of the Kölnischer Kunstverein . Isselmann did not take part in the exhibition opening itself. A few weeks earlier he had left for Tunisia with the painter William Straube (1871–1954), who was one of the Rhenish Expressionists , to spend a few months there. In addition to new artistic impulses, Isselmann hoped above all that his diseased lungs would recover. The year before, the doctors had diagnosed the onset of consumption and advised them to travel to dry and warm climates.

It is quite conceivable that during this trip he met the painters August Macke (1887–1914), Paul Klee (1879–1940) and Louis Moilliet (1880–1962), who met from April 7th to 19th during her Tunis trip stayed in the same area. In the summer of 1914 Isselmann turned his back on Tunisia as his financial resources were almost exhausted. He used the return trip to pay a visit to Rome and its numerous museums. Before the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Rees in August 1914. Seriously ill he vegetated in his parents' home and after a hemorrhage he was finally taken to a hospital in Essen. The then director of the City Museum Essen (today Museum Folkwang ), Ernst Gosebruch (1872–1953), looks after the seriously ill artist. In the spring of 1915 Isselmann returned terminally ill to Rees, where he died on March 17, 1916 in his parents' house of the consequences of his serious lung disease.

Gosebruch, who had previously bought Isselmann's paintings for the Essen Museum, managed the estate, which was administered by the Düsseldorf art dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), one of Isselmann's first sponsors. The fact that only a few traces of Isselmann can be found in art history today is certainly related to the later dissolution of the Flechtheim collection by the National Socialists (1933) and the influences of the war.

Isselmann was unable to set significant accents due to his early death. Nevertheless, his pictures, especially in Tunisia incurred, many enthusiasts found so that today stocks in various museums (about Kunstmuseum Bonn , Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf or Folkwang Museum can be found eating) and private collectors.

Exhibition (selection)

literature

  • Peter Kerschgens / Wolfgang Delseit (eds.): Ernst Isselmann (1885–1916) . Lechte, Emsdetten 1994, ISBN 978-3-7849-1197-7 . Exhibition catalog, 79 pages.

Web links

Commons : Ernst Isselmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kölnische Kunstverein, exhibitions from 1908 to 1912