Conrad Felixmüller (21 May 1897 – 24 March 1977) was a German

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

painter and printmaker. Born in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

as Conrad Felix Müller, he chose Felixmüller as his '' nom d'artiste''.

Early life and career

He attended drawing classes at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts in 1911–12 before studying under Carl Bantzer at the

Dresden Academy of Fine Arts The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (German ''Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden''), often abbreviated HfBK Dresden or simply HfBK, is a vocational university of visual arts located in Dresden, Germany. The present institution is the produc ...

.Michalski 1994, p. 210. In 1917 he performed military service as a medical orderly, and became a founding member of the Dresden Expressionist group ''Expressionistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dresden''. He achieved his earliest success as a printmaker. Felixmüller was a member of the Communist Party of Germany from 1918 to 1922. He published many woodcuts and drawings in left-wing magazines, and remained a prolific printmaker throughout his career."Conrad Felixmüller", Publication Excerpt: Starr Figura, ''German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse'', New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2011
MoMA website He was a close friend of the composer Clemens Braun of whom he produced a number of portraits and a woodcut depicting him on his deathbed. Another subject of Felixmüller's was his friend and German expressionist poet

Walter Rheiner Walter Rheiner (18 March 1895 – 12 June 1925; born Walter Heinrich Schnorrenberg in Cologne, Germany) was a writer and poet associated with the German post-expressionists. Early life Walter Rheiner was born in Cologne, Germany to his mother Er ...

. Felixmüller had done illustrations for many of Rheiner's works. In tribute following the news of Rheiner's death, Felixmüller's painting 'Der Tod des Dichters Walter Rheiner'pays homage to his deceased friend. Felixmüller was one of the youngest members of the

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, wh ...

movement. His paintings often deal with the social realities of Germany's

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...

. He was mentor to the German Expressionist

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George ...

. Felixmüller's work became more objective and restrained after the mid-1920s. He wrote in 1929:

It has become increasingly clear to me that the only necessary goal is to depict the direct, simple life which one has lived oneself, also involving the design of colour as painting—in the manner in which it was cultivated by the Old Masters for centuries, until Impressionism and Expressionism, infected by the technical and industrial delusions of grandeur, rejected every affinity for tradition, ability and results, committing harakiri.Michalski 1994, p. 62.

In the 1930s, many of his works were seized as

degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

by the Nazis, and destroyed. In 1944, his studio in Berlin was bombed, resulting in more losses of his works. From 1949 to 1962 Felixmüller taught at the

University of Halle Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university in ...

. He died in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf. His 1924 watercolour ''Couple in a Landscape'' was found as part of the Munich Art Hoard.

Notes

References

*Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). ''New Objectivity''. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen.

External links

Official site's biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Felixmuller, Conrad 1897 births 1977 deaths Artists from Dresden People from the Kingdom of Saxony German Expressionist painters 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German male painters

Early life and career

See also

Notes

References

External links