Written by:. Why write about German Expressionism? One of its brightest sic! But this time, I have a more substantial reason. Ten years? At least. I could have written about him in the earliest days of this project. The next temptation came when I was writing about Max Beckmann , the painter often associated with German Expressionism a label he flatly rejected- and honestly, good for him.
All these -isms, handed down by critics and curators, are like ill-fitting hats: reductive, often awkward, and almost always just plain annoying. And this particular -ism, the Expressionism, is particularly misleading.
And here lies another reason for my long hesitation. What do I mean by that? When did the first and last mirror works appear? Are there distinct periods or themes tied to their use? Do unusual patterns emerge over time? And so on, and so forth. Making posts like this can be interesting but the process is also tedious and time and efforts-intensive especially in the absence of such Catalogue raison! In this case I was lucky because I found one such Catalogue online it was originally compiled by Donald Gordon in and by now outdated; still, it was a useful source of knowledge.
And the result? Honestly, these posts often feel heavy and a bit dull. WordPress stats back me up here: these are the least-read and rarely commented posts on my blog compared to, say, posts about a single artwork or a certain theme. So yeah, no pain, no gain. Here we go:. At some point, he became fascinated by photography and took many pictures, often using them as indirect inspiration for his artworks. While unable to use them as a direct basis for painting, they do offer the secure guarantee of a form seen.
His father was an engineer specializing in paper-making machines, which meant frequent job changes and moves for the family. The family soon relocated to Frankfurt and later to Lucerne, in Switzerland, where his father also worked.
