Fritz Stuckenberg (16 August 1881,

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

– 18 May 1944,

Füssen Füssen is a town in Bavaria, Germany, in the district of Ostallgäu, situated one kilometre from the Austrian border. The town is known for violin manufacturing and as the closest transportation hub for the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau ca ...

) 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.

Biography

He was born Friedrich Bernhard Stuckenberg in Munich, but moved with his family in 1893 to the northern industrial city of

Delmenhorst Delmenhorst (; Northern Low Saxon: ''Demost'') is an urban district ('' Kreisfreie Stadt'') in Lower Saxony, Germany. It has a population of 74,500 and is located west of downtown Bremen with which it forms a contiguous urban area, whereas the ...

(near Bremen), where his father took over as director of the Hansa-Linoleumwerke. After unfinished studies of architecture and art studies in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

and Munich, he spent five formative years (1907–1913) in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. From there he made excursions to

Pont-Aven Pont-Aven (, Breton: 'River Bridge') is a commune in the Finistère department in the Brittany region in Northwestern France. In 2019, it had a population of 2,821. Demographics Inhabitants of Pont-Aven are called ''Pontavenistes'' in French ...

as well as to

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...

(

Cassis Cassis (; Occitan: ''Cassís'') is a commune situated east of Marseille in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, whose coastline is known in English as the French Riviera, in Southern France. In 201 ...

Martigues Martigues ( in classical norm, ''Lou Martegue'' in Mistralian norm) is a commune northwest of Marseille. It is part of the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the eastern end of the Canal de Caronte. A di ...

) where he "cleaned his palette". He belonged to the circle of artists in the " Café Du Dôme" and exhibited in some of the best salons and galleries in Paris. Coming back to Germany, he took residence in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, where he was discovered in 1916 by

Herwarth Walden Herwarth Walden (actual name Georg Lewin; 16 September 1879, in Berlin – 31 October 1941, in Saratov, Russia) was a German expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines. He is broadly acknowledged as one of the most important discove ...

and integrated into the Sturm circle. He became friends with

Georg Muche Georg Muche (8 May 1895 – 26 March 1987) was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher. Early life and education Georg Muche was born on 8 May 1895 in Querfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, and grew up in the Rhön ...

, Arnold Topp,

Walter Mehring Walter Mehring (29 April 1896 – 3 October 1981) was a German author and one of the most prominent satirical authors in the Weimar Republic. He was banned during the Third Reich, and fled the country. Early life He was the son of the tran ...

and Mynona. Disillusioned with Walden, he joined in 1919 the

Arbeitsrat für Kunst The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (German: 'Workers council for art' or 'Art Soviet') was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and Soldiers councils ...

around

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

and

Bruno Taut Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938) was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage ("taut" means "nation" in Lithuanian). He was active during the Weimar period and is know ...

, later the Novembergruppe. Several "Sturm"-exhibitions, participation in the first Berlin

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

ist exhibition, and inclusion in the third

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

portfolio, mark his rank in the artists' scene of these years. In the early 1920s, his works were shown in Germany, the USA and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

as that of a pioneer of the European

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

Severe illness and financial problems forced Stuckenberg nevertheless to return to his parents in "gloomy Delmenhorst" (as he writes in a letter to the Flemish dadaist

Paul van Ostaijen Paul van Ostaijen (22 February 1896 – 18 March 1928) was a Belgian Dutch-language poet and writer. Nickname Van Ostaijen was born in Antwerp to Dutch father and Flemish mother. His nickname was ''Mister 1830'', derived from his habit of walk ...

). Under increasingly difficult conditions, both political and personal, he developed a constructivist and spiritualist late work. All of his pictures were removed from German museums (and some of them destroyed) during the Nazi purges. In the infamous exhibition on "

Entartete Kunst 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, ...

" in 1937, his "''Straße mit Häusern''" (street with houses, 1921) was exhibited as an example of "

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, ...

". During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

he moved to the South of Germany and died there, already almost forgotten. In 1993 he was rediscovered as a part of the modern art avant-garde with a retrospective in Delmenhorst, Berlin and

Neuss Neuss (; spelled ''Neuß'' until 1968; li, Nüss ; la, Novaesium) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the west bank of the Rhine opposite Düsseldorf. Neuss is the largest city within the Rhein-Kreis Neuss district. It ...

. A large part of his surviving work is now to be seen in the Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst.

Sources

* Andrea Wandschneider, Barbara Alms (eds.): ''Fritz Stuckenberg 1881–1944: Retrospektive'', Berlin: Argon 1993. * Barbara Alms (ed.): ''Fritz Stuckenberg. Vertrauter der Farben'' (exhibition catalogue), Bremen: Hauschild 1998. * Barbara Alms (ed.): ''Paris leuchtet''. Bremen: Hachmannedition 2007.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stuckenberg, Fritz 19th-century German painters 19th-century German male artists German male painters 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German Expressionist painters Painters from Munich 1881 births 1944 deaths