Max Liebermann

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(b Berlin, 20 July 1847; d Berlin, 8 Feb 1935). German painter, draughtsman, printmaker and collector. He dominated the German art world from the 1890s to the 1930s. Although at first a highly controversial figure, after the turn of the century he was showered with honours. His Naturalist and Impressionist works have been consistently admired, despite being banned during the Nazi period. Liebermann's approach was that of a liberal cosmopolitan, and his work is distinguished by its honesty and commitment to social reform. Influenced by Dutch and French painting, he led the modernist movement in Germany away from the literary art of the 19th century.

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The German painter Max Liebermann (1847-1935) founded the German impressionist school and coordinated its development with the modern movement in Paris.

Max Liebermann was born on July 20, 1847, in Berlin into a Jewish family. His admiration for the Dutch painter Jozef Israëls and the many Jewish themes found in his works, particularly those executed in the Netherlands, testify to his religious consciousness. Liebermann began to study art at the University of Berlin, but he did not enter an art academy until 1868. This was in Weimar, where he remained until 1873. Between 1871 and 1875 he made three visits to the Netherlands, a country which appealed to him and to which he returned many times later.

Liebermann started to paint as a realist, and the free brushwork of Frans Hals influenced him decisively. Liebermann settled in Paris in 1873, and his early contact with the Barbizon school (1874) made him an adherent of plein-air (open-air) painting. He moved to Munich in 1878 and in 1884 settled in Berlin, where he lived the rest of his life. He retained the Old Master touch with its subdued color scheme until 1890, and his genre scenes - pictures of people working and street and market themes - were strongly realistic.

Only after he discovered Édouard Manet did Liebermann's palette become lighter, but it never approached the brilliance of Claude Monet's or Pierre Auguste Renoir's. Liebermann's colorism remained more connected with German and French realist painting. The influence of Edgar Degas liberated his style as a draftsman and graphic artist, and finally Liebermann's own mature and personal style emerged in pictures of sporting events and riders on the beach, views of his garden in Wannsee, portraits of high society, and self-portraits.

In 1892 Liebermann founded the Malervereinigung XI, a predecessor of the Berlin Secession. His first retrospective exhibition was held in the Berlin Academy in 1897, to which he was elected a member in 1899. That same year he founded the Secession, whose chairman he remained until 1911. In 1920 he became president of the Berlin Academy of Arts and Letters; the Nazis removed him from this position in 1932.

Liebermann, who was also a resourceful and original writer on art theory and a personality of great charm and wit, was one of the first artists to be persecuted by the Nazis because of his religion. In 1933 he was forbidden to paint and to exhibit, and his pictures were removed from German public collections. He died on Feb. 8, 1935, in Berlin.

Further Reading

There are no full-length biographies of Liebermann in English. A short biography is in Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting (1957). Liebermann is also discussed in Museum of Modern Art, German Art of the Twentieth Century (1957), by Werner Haftmann and others, and in Bernard S. Myers, The German Expressionists: A Generation in Revolt (1957).

Liebermann, Max (Berlin, 1847-1935, Berlin), a leading exponent of Impressionism whose working life, except for a spell in Munich (1878-84), was spent in Berlin where, in 1893, he founded the Berlin Sezession (see Sezessionen). He is particularly noted for his Dutch scenes (including Judengasse in Amsterdam, 1905). His early work is Naturalistic and his late style (from 1914) is represented in paintings of his garden (in Wannsee). His self-portrait dates from 1901. Liebermann's writings include Degas (1898) and Die Phantasie in der Malerei (1916); Gesammelte Schriften were published in 1922.

Max Liebermann in 1904

"Boys Bathing" Neue Pinakothek

Max Liebermann (July 20, 1847 – February 8, 1935) was a German-Jewish painter and printmaker best known for his etching and lithography.^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Commemoration 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Biography

The son of a Jewish businessman from Berlin, Liebermann first studied law and philosophy at the University of Berlin, but later studied painting and drawing in Weimar in 1869, in Paris in 1872, and in the Netherlands in 1876–77. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), Liebermann served as a medic with the Order of St. John near Metz. After living and working for some time in Munich, he finally returned to Berlin in 1884, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was married in 1884 to Martha Liebermann (1857–1943, see portrait by Anders Zorn).

He used his own inherited wealth to assemble an impressive collection of French Impressionist works. He later chose scenes of the bourgeoisie, as well as aspects of his garden near Lake Wannsee, as motifs for his paintings. In Berlin, he became a famous painter of portraits; his work is especially close in spirit to Édouard Manet. From 1899 to 1911 he led the premier avant-garde formation in Germany, the Berliner Secession. Beginning in 1920 he was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1933 he resigned when the academy decided to no longer exhibit works by Jewish artists. While watching the Nazis celebrate their victory by marching through the Brandenburg Gate, Liebermann was reported to have commented: "Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte" ("I could not eat as much as I would like to vomit.") Together with Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, Liebermann became an exponent of German Impressionism.

Commemoration

Martha Liebermann by Anders Zorn

Liebermann's grave in Berlin

On April 30, 2006, the Max Liebermann Society opened a permanent museum in the Liebermann family's villa in Berlin-Wannsee.^[2] The artist's wife, Martha Liebermann, was forced to sell the building in 1940. In 1943 she committed suicide in the family home, Haus Liebermann, hours before police came to deport her to Theresienstadt concentration camp.

See also

• The portrait of the German politician Otto Braun by Max Liebermann, 1932.
• Gallery of Liebermann's work at Wikimedia commons

References

1. ^ http://www.artoftheprint.com/artistpages/liebermann_max_selbstbildnisdeszeichnenden.htm
2. ^ http://www.max-liebermann.de

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Max Liebermann

• Hecht Museum
• Gallery of Liebermann's paintings at zeno.org
• Martha Liebermann portrait by Anders Zorn
•  "Liebermann, Max". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 

v • d • e Impressionism Originators Frédéric Bazille · Eugène Boudin · Gustave Caillebotte · Mary Cassatt · Paul Cézanne · Edgar Degas · Armand Guillaumin · Édouard Manet · Claude Monet · Berthe Morisot · Camille Pissarro · Pierre-Auguste Renoir · Alfred Sisley Patrons Gustave Caillebotte · Henry O. Havemeyer · Ernest Hoschedé Dealers Paul Durand-Ruel · Georges Petit · Ambroise Vollard Artists in USA Frederick Carl Frieseke · Childe Hassam · Willard Metcalf · Lilla Cabot Perry · Theodore Robinson · John Henry Twachtman · J. Alden Weir Other artists Lovis Corinth · Max Liebermann · Max Slevogt · Konstantin Korovin · Valentin Serov · Francisco Oller y Cestero · Laura Muntz Lyall · Władysław Podkowiński · Nazmi Ziya Güran · Chafik Charobim Other media Music · Literature · French Impressionist Cinema See also Post-Impressionism

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