César Klein (14 September 1876 – 13 March 1954) 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 designer, probably best known as one of the founders the November Group and 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 ...

. He is associated with the

Düsseldorf school of painting The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the Ac ...

. He was born in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

; when he was seventeen, his parents insisted that he be apprenticed to a craft painter. He later studied at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts, the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and the Royal Museum of Applied Arts in

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

. In 1910, he was one of the 27 artists rejected from the

Berlin Secession The Berlin Secession was an art movement established in Germany on May 2, 1898. Formed in reaction to the Association of Berlin Artists, and the restrictions on contemporary art imposed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, 65 artists "seceded," demonstrating ag ...

who responded by starting the

New Secession The New Secession (german: Neue Secession) was an association of expressionist artists organizing joint exhibitions in Berlin 1910–1914. The New Secession, initially led by Georg Tappert and Max Pechstein, was formed after 27 expressionistic w ...

. Klein created lithographs and woodcuts, stained glass windows and mosaics, and murals on walls and ceilings, in addition to his easel art. Given the practical bent of his training, Klein frequently "worked in media that appealed to a mass audience, such as architectural decoration, applied art, poster design, and theater and film design...." In 1913 he decorated the interior of the new

Marmorhaus The Marmorhaus (English: Marble House) is a former cinema located on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Opened in 1913, it takes its name from a large marble façade. Designed by the architect Hugo Pál, the walls of the foyer and auditorium were de ...

cinema in

. In the years after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Klein was associated with

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 ...

, though he turned down Gropius's offer of a teaching position at the

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., 2 ...

. Through the 1920s and after, Klein devoted much of his work to designs for theater and film production. He was the set designer for

Robert Wiene Robert Wiene (; 27 April 1873 – 17 July 1938) was a film director of the silent era of German cinema. He is particularly known for directing the German silent film ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' and a succession of other expressionist films. ...

's 1920 film '' Genuine'', and for the 1924 production of

Ernst Toller Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic ...

's ''Hinkemann''.Cecil William Davies, ''The Plays of Ernst Toller'', London, Routledge, 1996; p. 290. Klein was included in the famous

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, ...

exhibition mounted by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

regime in 1937. He was able to resume his career in theatrical design after

World War II 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. He died in 1954, at Pansdorf near

Lübeck Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the stat ...

References

19th-century German painters German male painters 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists Modern painters German Expressionist painters 1876 births 1954 deaths 19th-century German male artists {{Germany-artist-stub