Otto Mueller
Biography of German Expressionist Painter:
Die Brucke Group.
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Otto Mueller
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Otto Mueller (1874-1930)Contents • Biography |
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An important representative of German Expressionism, the painter and graphic artist Otto Mueller was a late member of the Die Brucke group of expressionist painters, joining in Berlin, in 1910. Other members included Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976) and Erich Heckel (1883-1970), as well as Cuno Amiet (1868-1961), Emil Nolde (1867-1956), Max Pechstein (1881-1955) and Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931). Influenced by the curvilinear forms of Art Nouveau, as well as by the Expressionist sculpture of Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919), Mueller's expressionism was more lyrical and less anguished than other Brucke painters, and his compositions were typically more balanced with simplified forms and colour schemes. A master of both painting as well as printmaking, Mueller is noted above all for his landscape painting, populated by female nudes, and elongated figures. At the end of World War I he began teaching at the Breslau Academy of Art and continued there until his death in 1930. Like many modern artists, Mueller's paintings were condemned as Degenerate Art by the Nazis. |
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WORLDS BEST PAINTERS MEANING OF ART
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Born in Liebau (now Lubawka), German Silesia, he spent his early youth with his mother and other siblings at his grandparents estate. At the age of 8, he joined his father at Gorlitz, where he attended primary and secondary school, after which he spent four years as an apprentice lithographer in Gorlitz and Breslau. In 1894 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, under Georg Hermann Freye and Carl Ludwig Noah Bantzer. In addition, during the course of 1896 and 1897 he travelled to Italy and Switzerland with the writer Gerhart Hauptmann, to whom he was related. In 1898-99 Mueller and his friend Paul Kother continued their studies at the Munich Academy under Franz von Stuck. Uncomfortable with von Stuck's style of academic art and content to educate himself, Mueller moved to Wolfratshausen, near Munich. In autumn 1899 he returned to Dresden where the Hauptmanns had furnished a studio for him. Until moving to Berlin in 1908, Mueller withdrew evermore frequently to small villages in the Riesen Gerbirge, painted in Bohemia and the area around Dresden. His early pictures were strongly influenced by modern art movements such as Impressionism, and in particular by the curvilinear designs of Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau), but no paintings survive from this period, as he destroyed them. He was also inspired by German Art of the 19th-Century, such as the works of the Symbolism painter Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901), which gave him important ideas concerning the mythical element in nature. Above all, what influenced his painting and what linked him with his contemporaries, was his yearning for a simple and natural way of life: "My chief goal is to express my feelings for landscapes and for men with the greatest possible simplicity." |
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In 1908 Mueller left Dresden for Berlin. During his first two years in the German capital he met the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, the writer Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) as well as the painter Erich Heckel (1883-1970), with whom he became close friends. During this period, he tried and failed to have his paintings included in the Berlin Secession exhibition - the progressive alternative to the Berlin Academy exhibition. As a result, in 1910, he joined other artists in exhibiting at the Rejects of the Berlin Secession Exhibition, and in setting up the "New Secession". Among his new-found colleagues were Emil Nolde (1867-1956) and Max Pechstein (1881-1955), members of the Die Brucke group. Mueller's paintings of nudes in a landscape setting - images for which he is now best remembered - caught the attention of the Brucke artists, and he was invited to join the group (which also included Kirchner, Bleyl and Schmidt-Rottluff), where he remained until its disbandment in 1913. In addition, through his membership of Die Brucke, Mueller also came into contact with the modern art being produced by members of Der Blaue Reiter, an offshoot of the Neue Kunstlervereiningung (New Artist Federation) in Munich. They included the Russians Wassily Kandinsky (1844-1944), and Alexei von Jawlensky (1864-1941), the Swiss painter Paul Klee (1879-1940), and the Germans Franz Marc (1880-1916), and August Macke (1887-1914). Mueller had already evolved his large-scale two-dimensional nudes, but they were still outlined with rounded, gentle, mellifluous contours. Under the influence of his colleagues - he went with Kirchner to Bohemia in 1911 - his style of painting became more expressionist. His outlines became more angular and taut, his forms became broader and his contours more emphasised; the organization of the surface area became clearer and simpler. And once he had found the motif of the nude in a landscape, it became the dominant theme in his work. It was followed in the 1920s by pure landscape as well as portraits and paintings of gypsies. He continued to rework these themes without any noticeable stylistic change. However, at no time did Mueller lapse into the angst-ridden intense painting style of his colleagues. For more about Mueller's contribution to early expressionism, see: History of Expressionist Painting (c.1880-1930). During World War I Mueller served in the military for two years (1916-18) in France and Russia, and was hospitalized for a short period in 1917. Curiously, unlike other German Expressionist artists, from both Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke, his style of imagery was hardly affected by his experiences in the trenches. 1920s: Breslau Academy and Gypsy Art After the war, Mueller was appointed Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Breslau, Silesia, where he taught until his death in September 1930. During the 1920s he travelled widely throughout Eastern Europe. This enabled him to indulge his keen interest in the region's Romani (Gypsy) culture, which he captured in the form of portrait art and genre painting, as well as his customary nudes in landscape. His preferred medium for his paintings was distemper (a type of paint which has a base of glue or size, instead of oil) on coarse canvas, which produced a mat surface. He also devoted time to printmaking, including (mostly) lithography, as well as a few woodcuts. In 1937, seven years after his death, his painting was declared to be "degenerate art" (entartete kunst), and Nazi cultural censors seized more than 300 of his works from German museums. Mueller's creativity originated in the Art Nouveau movement, which helps to explain the linear aspect of his art. In addition, the way he emphasized silhouette, and the classical, graceful appearance of his figures is due to the influence of Wilhelm Lehmbruck - see, for instance, the attenuated form of the latter's statues Keeling Woman (1911, MOMA, New York) and Seated Youth (1917, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC). When he turned towards Expressionism, his forms broadened and became more angular. Out of all this came his remarkable nude compositions - now regarded as being among the best of his era. What sets him apart from the typical German Expressionist painters is the harmony and tranquility of his pictures. Colour, for instance, never becomes an independent element (compare works by Schmidt-Rottluff or Nolde), but remains part of the general composition. Indeed, the essential theme of Mueller's expressionist paintings, which was already decided when he met the Die Brucke painters in 1910, was to portray the harmony of man and nature. Paintings by Otto Mueller can be seen in some of the best art museums in Europe. |
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• For biographies of other Die Brucke
expressionist artists, see: 20th
Century Painters.
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