Lovis Corinth

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(b Tapiau, East Prussia, 21 July 1858; d Zandvoort, Netherlands, 17 July 1925). German painter and writer. He grew up on his family's farm and tannery. As a child he showed interest in art, taking informal lessons in drawing from a local carpenter and caricaturing his primary school teachers. Corinth's father sent him to secondary school in the nearby city of K?nigsberg (now Kaliningrad), where he lived with his widowed aunt. A superstitious woman fond of story-telling, she possessed what Corinth later described as a coarse temperament and an unrestrained, 'demonic' humour. These qualities and his aunt's bohemian acquaintances, including fortune-tellers and soothsayers, fascinated the young Corinth, accustomed to his more reserved parents. In this environment Corinth began to develop the rich imagination and love of anecdote that came to play such an important role in the evolution of his art.

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Lovis Corinth (1838-1925) was a leading German artist of the late 19th-early 20th century with a prodigeous output of work.

Lovis Corinth was born in 1838 in the town of Tapiau in East Prussia (now the Soviet Union), the son of a tanner. He was named Louis, but came to be called Lovis because he later signed his name with a Latin-style "u" which is written as a "v". Corinth grew up in a rural setting, with little or no exposure to works of art. From a very early age, however, he enjoyed sketching and painting. At the age of nine he was enrolled first in the public school in nearby Konigsberg and then at the Konigsberg Academy of Art.

Corinth continued his artistic training in Munich (1880-1882), and then in Antwerp and Paris (1884-1886), where he studied with the well-known academic painter Adolphe William Bouguereau. During this period Corinth remained uninfluenced by the "modern" painters of the day, such as Manet and Monet; he preferred instead the naturalistic style of Wilhelm Leibl, who had been a pupil of Gustave Courbet. He also admired works by Rubens in the Louvre in Paris and by Rembrandt.

Corinth returned to Germany in 1891 and continued his painting career. He became a part of the art world of Berlin at the turn of the century and in 1901 he opened a school for painters there. His first student, Charlotte Berend, became his wife two years later.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Corinth's palette became brighter and he began to employ the freer brush-work characteristic of the German Impressionists, represented by Max Liebermann. In addition to his landscapes and figure compositions, he achieved great success as a portrait painter, and his services were much in demand. Corinth was elected chairman of the Secession, the Berlin artists' association to which he had belonged since 1899, in 1911. In that same year he completed 61 oils, as well as many drawings, etchings, and lithographs, and all of his work was selling well.

At the end of the year, however, Corinth suffered a massive stroke which threatened to end his career. His left side was paralyzed, but through great perserverance and determination he was able to resume painting the following year. From 1912 until his death in 1925 Corinth continued to work and to struggle against his increasing debility. He produced some 500 oils and about 1,000 prints, in addition to drawings and watercolors. He was named president of the Berlin Secession in 1915.

In Corinth's late work expressive elements dominate, reflecting his own personal struggles against his illness and, perhaps, an increased perception of the world around him. He created numerous portraits and self-portraits, notable for their profound psychological insights, and his work influenced later generations of German artists.

Corinth died in July 1925 while on a visit to Holland to see paintings by Rembrandt and Frans Hals. One of his most famous paintings, Ecce Homo, was done earlier in the year. His late work was condemned by the Nazis as degenerate. Today, however, Corinth is seen as a major artist whose paintings combined elements from the Old Masters he admired, such as Rembrandt, with late 19th-century Impressionism to create, in his late work, a fully modern idiom. His paintings, drawings, and prints are included in numerous public and private collections throughout the world.

Further Reading

The majority of writings on Lovis Corinth and his art are in German. His widow, Charlotte Berend-Corinth, published a catalogue of all of his works in 1958. Corinth was included in a major exhibition titled German Art in the 20th Century, Painting and Sculpture 1905-1985, held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1985. The accompanying catalogue contains numerous reproductions of his works, as well as biographical information.

Additional Sources

Uhr, Horst, Lovis Corinth, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Corinth, Lovis (Tapian, East Prussia, 1858-1925, Zandvoort, Holland), a German painter, is best known for landscapes, but also painted a number of portraits, including among his sitters some literary figures (Eduard Graf Keyserling, P. Hille, G. Hauptmann, and G. Brandes). He also painted F. Ebert, the first president of the Weimar Republic. Having suffered serious illness in his early 50s, the realism of his style assumed Expressionist elements, accentuating the intensity of his artistic vision. He published books on art, Das Erlernen der Malerei (1908), Legenden aus dem Künstlerleben (1912), Über deutsche Kunst (1914). His collected writings were published in 1921, and an autobiography appeared posthumously in 1926.

Self-portrait with Skeleton, 1896, oil on canvas, 66 x 86 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus.

The Artist and His Family, 1909, oil on canvas, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hanover.

Piéta, drypoint by Lovis Corinth, 1920

Lovis Corinth (21 July 1858 – 17 July 1925) was a German painter and printmaker whose mature work realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism.

Corinth studied in Paris and Munich, joined the Berlin Secession group, later succeeding Max Liebermann as the group's president. His early work was naturalistic in approach. Corinth was initially antagonistic towards the expressionist movement, but after a stroke in 1911 his style loosened and took on many expressionistic qualities. His use of color became more vibrant, and he created portraits and landscapes of extraordinary vitality and power. Corinth's subject matter also included nudes and biblical scenes.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Notes 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Corinth was born in Tapiau (Gvardeysk), Province of Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia. Showing an early talent for drawing, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1880, which rivaled Paris as the avant-garde art center in Europe at the time. There he was influenced by Courbet and the Barbizon school, through their interpretation by the Munich artists Wilhelm Leibl and Wilhelm Trübner. Corinth then traveled to Paris where he studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julian.

In 1891, Corinth returned to Munich, but in 1892 he abandoned the Munich Academy and joined the first Sezession. In 1894 he joined the Free Association, and in 1899 he participated in an exhibition organized by the Berlin Secession. These nine years in Munich were not his most productive, and he was perhaps better known for his ability to drink large amounts of red wine and champagne.

In 1900 Corinth moved to Berlin, and had a one-man exhibition at a gallery owned by Paul Cassirer. In 1902 at the age of 43, he opened a school of painting for women and married his first student, Charlotte Berend, some 20 years his junior. Charlotte was his youthful muse, his spiritual partner, and the mother of his two children. She had a profound influence on him, and family life became a major theme in his art.

In December 1911 he suffered a stroke, and was partially paralyzed on his left side. With the help of his wife, within a year he was painting again with his right hand. It was at this time that landscapes became a significant part of his oeuvre. These landscapes were set at the Walchensee, a lake in the Bavarian Alps where Corinth owned a house. Their lively picturing, in bright colors, tempt many to consider the Walchensee series as his best work. From 1915–25, he served as President of the Berlin Secession.

Corinth explored every print technique except aquatint; he favored drypoint and lithography. He created his first etching in 1891 and his first lithograph in 1894. He experimented with the woodcut medium but made only 12 woodcuts, all of them between 1919–1924.^[1]

He was quite prolific, and in the last fifteen years of his life he produced more than 900 graphic works, including 60 self-portraits. The landscapes he created between 1919 and 1925 are perhaps the most desirable images of his entire graphic oeuvre.

He painted numerous self-portraits, and made a habit of painting one every year on his birthday as a means of self-examination.^[2] In many of his self-portraits he assumed guises such as an armored knight (The Victor, 1910), or Samson (The Blinded Samson, 1912).^[3] A self-portrait of 1924 is in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

On 15 March 1921 Corinth received an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg. In 1925, he traveled to the Netherlands to view the works of his favorite Dutch masters. He caught pneumonia and died in Zandvoort.

In 1910 Corinth had donated the painting Golgatha for the altar of the church of his birthplace, Tapiau. At the end of the Second World War, when the Red Army army invaded East Prussia, this painting disappeared without trace. Tapiau was among the few East Prussian places not devastated by the war. The house where Corinth was born is still in the town, which is now Gvardeysk, Kaliningrad Oblast.

Notes

1. ^ Corinth, Schuster, Vitali, & Butts 1996, p. 369.
2. ^ Corinth, Schuster, Vitali, & Butts 1996, p. 142.
3. ^ Corinth, Schuster, Vitali, & Butts 1996, pp. 41–42.

References

• Corinth, L., Schuster, P.-K., Vitali, C., & Butts, B. (1996). Lovis Corinth. Munich: Prestel. ISBN 3791316826

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lovis Corinth

• Gallery at "Museumsportal Schleswig-Holstein"
• Gallery of works by Lovis Corinth
• Corinth Gallery at MuseumSyndicate

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