Fritz Cäsar Baumann (3 May 1886, Basel – 9 October 1942, Basel) was a Swiss painter who worked primarily in the Expressionist and Cubist styles. Preoccupation with caricature, textile and pottery, puppet theater and book illustration.

Biography

From 1904 to 1907, he completed an apprenticeship in decorative painting. He then studied with

Fritz Schider Fritz Schider or Schieder (13 February 1846, Salzburg - 15 March 1907, Basel) was an Austrian painter, engraver and art teacher. Biography He was born to a middle-class family of manufacturers. After completing his basic education, he entered ...

at the (Arts and Crafts School) in Basel for one year. This was followed by a study trip to Rome with August Babberger. Upon his return, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He then moved to the mountain village of Rührberg, near Grenzach, where he created drypoint etchings. In 1909, he married Anny Rickenbach, daughter of a gunsmith from Muttenz. Shortly after, he went to Karlsruhe to study with

Hans Thoma Hans Thoma (2 October 1839 – 7 November 1924) was a German painter. Biography Hans Thoma was born on 2 October 1839 in Bernau in the Black Forest, Germany. He was the son of a miller and was trained in the basics of painting by a painter ...

and improve his etching techniques. After the birth of his son Fritzli in 1910, the family lived in Erlenhof (

Thürnen Thürnen is a municipality in the district of Sissach in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. Geography Thürnen has an area, , of . Of this area, or 56.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 25.3% is forested. Of the rest of ...

) but spent the winters in Paris working at La Ruche, an artists' residence. After a stay there in 1912, he began to focus almost exclusively on woodcuts. For a time, he was obsessed with creating portraits of his son. In 1913, they moved to Berlin, where he became a member of '' Der Sturm'', an artists' group associated with the journal of the same name. Anny died in May 1914. To suppress his grief, he volunteered for military service and was assigned as a Gefreiter to a Pionier-Kompanie in Ticino. It was there he met his second wife, Emma Ziswyler. He continued to exhibit his woodcuts, while in service, with the help of Herwarth Walden. Back in Basel, after the war, he became a teacher; at the Gewerbeschule and the Frauenarbeitsschule, a similar organization for women. He was also a cofounder of the artists' group ''Das Neue Leben'', and wrote the group's manifesto: In the mid 1920s, he began to suffer from recurring bouts of depression and developed doubts about his artistic abilities. At some point, he took most of his important works from 1916 to 1920 and threw them in the Rhine. After 1928, he ceased exhibiting and focused almost entirely on teaching. He committed suicide in 1942.

Selected works

File:Fritz Baumann Gandria 1918.jpg, Gandria File:Fritz Baumann Mann mit Strohhut 1913.jpg, Man in a Straw Hat ( Otto Morach) File:Fritz Baumann Schicksal 1918.jpg, Fate File:Fritz Baumann Betrunkene 1916.jpg, Drunkards File:Fritz Baumann Fritzli 1917.jpg, Portrait of Fritzli at age seven

External links

''Fritz Baumann – Leben und Werk''
Website * * *
More works by Baumann
@ ArtNet {{DEFAULTSORT:Baumann, Fritz Swiss male painters 20th-century Swiss painters 20th-century Swiss male artists 1886 births 1942 deaths 1942 suicides 20th-century Swiss military personnel Suicides in Switzerland