Rudolf Schlichter (or Rudolph Schlichter) (December 6, 1890 – May 3, 1955) was a German painter, engraver and writer. He was one of the most important representatives of the critical-realistic style of verism within the
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity (in ) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against German Expressionism, expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kunsthalle' ...
movement. He also wrote some autobiographical books.
Biography
Early life and career
Schlichter was born in
Calw
Calw (; previously pronounced and sometimes spelled Kalb accordingly; ) is a Landstadt, town in the middle of Baden-Württemberg in the south of Germany, capital and largest town of the Calw (district), district Calw. It is located in the North ...
,
Württemberg
Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart.
Together with Baden and Province of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern, two other histo ...
. He lost his father early, and grew up as the youngest of six siblings. His mother, who worked as a seamstress, was a Protestant, while his father, a professional gardener, was a Catholic. According to his fathers wish, the children were brought up as Catholics. He attended the Latin school in Calw until the sixth grade.
He started in 1904 an apprenticeship as an enamel painter at a
Pforzheim
Pforzheim () is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city of over 125,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.
It is known for its jewelry and watch-making industry, and as such has gained the ...
factory. After that he attended the
State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, in
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...
, from 1907 to 1909. He subsequently studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts, in
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...
, under
Hans Thoma and
Wilhelm Trübner, among others, from 1910 to 1916. Already during his studies, Schlichter developed into an artist who saw himself related to contemporary bohemian ideals and in rebellion against traditional bourgeois values.
Shlichter liked to portray himself as a dandy at the time, following his role model,
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
. Schlichter undertook various study trips to
Strasbourg
Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...
, in Alsace, to Italy and France, and got contacts to the underworld through fellow painter Julius Kaspar. He visited Berlin for the first time around 1910, where his brother Max Schlichter (1882–1932) was head chef at the renowned Hotel Kaiserhof. As a dandy-like flaneur through the streets of the capital, with its light and dark districts, he experienced "the uninterrupted succession of fear experiences - especially through the presence of whores, gays, criminals in these streets - (these) triggered in him a panicky "thrill" that his small-town experience and adventure potential blew up".
Because of his short-sightedness, Schlichter was initially exempt from military service during the
First World War
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. He would eventually be deployed as a munitions driver on the Western Front, but returned from there the following year after a hunger strike done to secure an early release. In 1918 he became a member of a soldiers' council.
The 1920s
Schlichter had a first exhibition in 1919 in the Iwan Moos Gallery, in
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...
. Shortly before the opening of the exhibition, he founded the group Rih, together with other former graduates of the Karlsruhe art school, like Wladimir von Zabotin and
Georg Scholz. The artists were determined to counteract the more conservative Karlsruhe art scene with their works, which could be assigned at the time to
Expressionism
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 ...
or
Dadaism
Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...
. The group made provocative statements and actions; for example, phallic symbols drawn with chalk on the walls of the house pointed the way to the exhibition space. The provocative themes of the exhibition and the new artistic language were discussed very controversially back then. In 1919, Schlichter moved to
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, where he joined the November Group, the Berlin Secession, the Berlin Dadaists and became politically active. A first presentation of his paintings in his brother Max's new restaurant "Schlichters" quickly made Schlichter a certain acquaintance in artistic circles in the capital, including
John Heartfield
John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. Heartfield a ...
and
George Grosz
George Grosz (; ; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Obj ...
, with whom he shared a studio at times and of which he also drew the same models.
In 1920 he had his first solo exhibition in the Berlin gallery Burchard, and he took part in the First International Dada Fair. Here the object ''Prussian Archangel'', a soldier doll with a pig's head hanging from the ceiling, which he had created with Heartfield, caused a scandal. Arbitrators, George Grosz,
Wieland Herzfelde
Wieland Herzfelde ( Herzfeld; 11 April 1896 – 23 November 1988) was a German publisher and writer. He is particularly known for his links with German avant-garde art and Marxist thought, and was the brother of the photo montage artist John H ...
, John Heartfield and the gallery owner Otto Burchard were charged with insulting the
Reichswehr
''Reichswehr'' (; ) was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first two years of Nazi Germany. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped ...
.
A major work from this period is his ''Dada Roof Studio'', a
watercolor
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting metho ...
showing an assortment of figures on an urban rooftop. Around a table sit a woman and two men in top hats. One of the men has a
prosthetic
In medicine, a prosthesis (: prostheses; from ), or a prosthetic implant, is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through physical trauma, disease, or a condition present at birth (Congenital, congenital disord ...
hand and the other, also missing a hand, appears on closer scrutiny to be mannequin. Two other figures in gas masks may also be mannequins. A child holds a pail and a woman wearing high button shoes (for which Schlichter displayed a marked
fetish) stands on a pedestal, gesturing inexplicably.
Politically, Schlichter was involved in left-wing organizations and in the communist party
KPD, of which he was a member from 1919 to 1927. From around 1922 he lived with a prostitute. His circle of friends and acquaintances at the time ranged from
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
,
Fritz Sternberg,
Alfred Döblin
Bruno Alfred Döblin (; 10 August 1878 – 26 June 1957) was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel '' Berlin Alexanderplatz'' (1929). A prolific writer whose œuvre spans more than half a century and a wide variety of ...
,
Geza von Cziffra and Grosz, to
Carl Zuckmayer
Carl Zuckmayer (27 December 1896 – 18 January 1977) was a German writer and playwright. His older brother was the pedagogue, composer, conductor, and pianist Eduard Zuckmayer.
His first two dramas were failures. In 1929, he wrote the script ...
, whom he had met in Karlsruhe. After falling out with the November Group in 1924, he was one of the founders of the Red Group, which was in opposition to it. The same year, he participated in the first German art exhibition held in the
USSR
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
. In 1925, Schlichter's works were on view in the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in
Mannheim
Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...
, initiated by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the
Kunsthalle Mannheim
The Kunsthalle Mannheim is a museum of modern and contemporary art, built in 1907, established in 1909 and located in Mannheim, Germany. Since then it has housed the city's art collections as well as temporary exhibitions – and up to 1927 those ...
. His work from this period is realistic, a good example being the ''Portrait of Margot'' (1924) now in the Berlin
Märkisches Museum. It depicts a prostitute who often modeled for Schlichter, standing on a deserted street and holding a cigarette. In 1926, he participated with several well-known left-wing artists in an exhibition of proletarian and anti-militarist art held in the exhibition hall of the Berlin amusement park ULAP.
In 1927, Schlichter met his future wife, (1902-1975), known as "Speedy", who, because of her appearance and demeanor in Berlin artistic circles, had the reputation of being a "living lady". From then on she became his most important confidant and reference person. In 1929, the couple got married. Since then, Speedy contributed to the couple's livelihood through having love affairs that paid off financially, which led to feelings of guilt and outbursts of jealousy from her husband. His wife was represented by Schlichter in countless drawings, sketches, watercolors and paintings.
The 1930s and early 1940s
Under the influence of his wife, he turned away from communism and the Berlin avant-garde in the early 1930s and began to revert to
Roman Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
, and to sympathize with the circle of new nationalists. "During this phase of upheaval, Schlichter temporarily experimented with expressive forms of expression and a more painterly style in his pictures". He expanded his circle of acquaintances to include the authors
Arnolt Bronnen,
Ernst von Salomon
Ernst von Salomon (25 September 1902 – 9 August 1972) was a German novelist and screenwriter. He was a Weimar-era national-revolutionary activist and right-wing Freikorps member.
Family and education
He was born in Kiel, in the Kingdom of Pr ...
and the politician
Ernst Niekisch.
The seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 was accompanied by Schlichter with sympathy. He no longer thought he had to assert himself in “any all-Jewish artist junk shop”, as he wrote in a letter to his artist colleague
Franz Radziwill, which he signed with the salutation “Sieg und Heil”. In 1932 the Schlichter couple moved back to the artist's Swabian homeland and settled in
Rottenburg.
At first, Schlichter believed he could take part in the "national revolution" of the Nazis by drafting a religious-national concept of art. He believed that the art-educational task in advance was to create the "foundation of a new, German and world-renowned popular culture."
In Rottenburg, Schlichter maintained good relations with Roman Catholic Bishop
Joannes Baptista Sproll, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis, whom he portrayed. The acquaintance with
Carlo Schmid, one of the later fathers of the Basic Law is attested. After his autobiographical books were banned in 1933, Schlichter realized that the new rulers had no interest in him. A drawing critical of the regime that he made for the Catholic youth magazine "Junge Front" led to his exclusion from the Reich Chamber of Literature and the Reich Association of German Writers in 1934.
In 1935 he returned to Stuttgart. A more or less secret exhibition at his new place of residence in Stuttgart was made possible in 1936 with the support of Hugo Borst in his Stuttgart private gallery in Haus Sonnenhalde - this would no longer have been possible in the more heavily controlled area of museums and public institutions. In 1937, 17 of his works were confiscated as part of the Nazi action against so-called
Degenerate Art. Some of his works were presented in the
Degenerate Art propaganda exhibitions, and others were destroyed. At the beginning of 1938 Schlichter was temporarily removed from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, expelled, banned from exhibiting, and was shortly thereafter, denounced because of his "non-National Socialist lifestyle".
In 1939 he moved to Munich, where he was in contact with
Hans Scholl
Hans Fritz Scholl (; 22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement's ...
, among others, and joined the circle around the Catholic journal ''Hochland''. In 1939 he was able to show a drawing at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich. His studio was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1942, and he lost some of his works.
After 1945
After the Second World War he took part in the first General German Art Exhibition of the post-war period in Dresden in 1946 and in the first exhibition held in the Schäzler Palais, in Augsburg, in the same year and founded the Neue Gruppe, in Munich, which he chaired with . Occasionally he also worked for the satirical magazine ''Der Simpl''. In 1950 he joined the reestablished Deutscher Künstlerbund, for whose first exhibition in 1951 in Berlin, he presented two oil paintings, made in 1948. In 1954 he was represented with eight works at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
. In 1953 and 1955, the second time a few weeks before his death, he had his final solo exhibitions in Munich. Schlichter died of uremia and was buried in the Munich forest cemetery.
Schlichter created fantastical allegories and historical paintings influenced by
surrealism
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 ...
during and especially after the
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. In the 1950s, he had found a socially acceptable representation for his personal fantasies, by creating paintings with surreal and apocalyptical landscapes that seem to have been inspired by
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( ; ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His ...
,
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 - January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (; ), was a French Surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy was the son of a retired navy captain, and was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Aff ...
or
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
. He was compared to Dali because of his technical virtuosity, devotion to his muse, sexual obsessions and verbose sense of mission.
Rudolf Schlichter – Eros und Apokalypse, Kunst + Film, 29 January 2016 (German)
/ref>
Literary work
Schlichter wrote several confessional writings, some with autobiographical references and erotic themes. He published ''Zwischenwelten'' (1931), which was his first attempt to process his erotic mania and was described by the publisher as "the passionate confession of an erotically devious nature". In the two following years, he published two other confessional works: ''Das widerspenstige Fleisch'' and ''Tönerne Füße''.
Notes
References
*Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). ''New Objectivity''. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen.
*Schmied, Wieland (1978). ''Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties''. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schlichter, Rudolf
1890 births
1955 deaths
People from Calw
20th-century German painters
20th-century German male artists
German male painters
German male writers
Artists from the Kingdom of Württemberg
Communist Party of Germany politicians
Dada
State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart alumni