Emil Bartoschek (30 July 1899 in Czuchow, Silesia – 26 February 1969 in Waldbrunn, Hesse, Germany) was a German painter and

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

-artist.

Life

Bartoschek was born in Czuchow, which became part of Poland in 1922. He began to learn and work in 1914 as a decorative painter in Czerwionka, where he also received drawing and painting lessons from the academic painter Gotschlich. His initial works were shown in a collective exhibition in Hindenburg in 1919.

At the Bauhaus and in Breslau

In 1920 he began his studies with the preliminary course of

Johannes Itten Johannes Itten (11 November 1888 – 25 March 1967) was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus (''Staatliches Bauhaus'') school. Together with German-American painter Lyonel Feining ...

at the

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...

. He was also taught by

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

and

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during his studies. Due to the turbulent political situation in the border area of Poland and German Silesia, he left Weimar, and in 1921 went to study at the State Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in Breslau (today: Wroclaw). He was a master student of

Otto Mueller Otto Melller (16 October 1874 – 24 September 1930) was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement. Life and work Mueller was born in Liebau (now Lubawka, Kamienna Góra County), Kreis Landeshut, Silesia. ...

and Oskar Moll. He was a member of the artist group

Die Brücke Die Brücke (The Bridge), also known as Künstlergruppe Brücke or KG Brücke, was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. The founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Karl Schmidt-R ...

(The Bridge). From 1925 Bartoschek worked as an artist in Breslau and had solo exhibitions and participated also in collective exhibitions. He shared a studio with

Alexander Camaro Alexander Camaro (actual name Alphons Bernhard Kamarofski: 27 September 1901 – 20 October 1992) was a German artist (painter) and dancer. Life Alphons Bernhard Kamarofski was born and grew up in Breslau (as Wrocław was known before) 19 ...

. In 1930 he married Elsa Bartoschek and moved in 1937 permanently to Berlin.

Berlin

His studio in Berlin was near the Tiergarten. For commercial and political reasons he made popular impressionist and naturalist paintings of the landscape of Brandenburg, which were sold through the galleries of Sarcander and Kallide, at the Friedrichstrasse, in large quantities. As he was afraid to be arrested by the Nazis producing "degenerate art", his real artistic work was presented in a very small circle, and only a few of these modernist paintings and drawings were sold. In 1939 he bought a small lot in the countryside near Schorfheide and built a weekend home to work more undisturbed. In 1942 his Berlin studio and much of his work was destroyed by bombs, and he moved temporarily to Schorfheide. In 1945 he escaped from the Russians, with only a few personal items, to the western part of Germany. Works by Bartoschek, hidden in a bunker in Berlin, were destroyed in the

battle of Berlin The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. After the Vistula–Od ...

Western Germany after 1945

Emil Bartoschek became part of the artist association Hagenring in Hagen. In 1949 he separated from his first wife, and he married his former student Hildegard Grunert, who taught ceramics and decorative painting in Cologne. Bartoschek's later work turned back to the modern painting and produced a large quantity of impressionistic, abstract,

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 ...

and

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

oil paintings, drawings, watercolors,

tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. ''Tempera'' also refers to the paintings done in ...

paintings, charcoal, chalk and graphite drawings. In 1969, Emil Bartoschek died shortly before his 70th birthday.

Works

With his pictures which he painted to conceal his abstract work in large numbers, plus the destruction of his main works and his extensive and wide-ranging later works, today give a distorted picture of the work of the Bauhaus artist Bartoschek. Works of his can be found in the Museum Haus Schlesien (Deutsches Kultur- and Bildungszentrum e. V., in Heisterbacherrott, Museum of the City of Lennestadt) as well as in private collections. The Haus Schlesien in 1986 displayed an exhibition with works of Bartoschek.

References