Brücke artist Otto Mueller finally gets some well-deserved recognition
In 1905 four students of architecture, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, came together in Dresden to form an artists’ association, which they called “Die Brücke” (The Bridge). It was their aim to break away from the conservative, restrictive style of academic painting to create a bridge—hence the name—to the art of the future. The Brücke artists were concerned with the symbolic expression of feelings through color and form. They ignored the traditional rules of perspective and proportion favored in academic painting and instead created pictures whose bold brushwork, distorted images and harsh colors were intended to convey raw emotion and immediacy. By 1910 the Brücke had expanded to include three further members, Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde and Otto Mueller, and the term Expressionism has been coined to describe their style of painting. In the almost 100 years since the inception of Expressionism, so much has been written and exhibited on this movement and its influence on subsequent schools of art that it seems unlikely that anything new could be discovered. Surprisingly, however, the work of Otto Mueller (1874–1930), the last major artist to join the Brücke, has gone largely unnoticed (since his death there have been only two exhibitions of Mueller’s work). Happily this oversight is now being redressed by an exhibition at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, where 65 paintings, 45 drawings and 50 hand-colored lithographs by the artist are currently on display. Mueller, who was born in Liebau, Silesia (today Libawka, Poland), began his career by receiving training in lithography in Breslau, before enrolling at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1894. In 1898 he briefly attended classes at the Munich Academy, but left when painter and professor at the academy Franz von Stuck declared him to be untalented. Mueller does not seem to have been put off by this incident, for he continued to paint. In 1910 his perseverance paid off when he was invited to display his work at the first exhibition of the Neue Sezession (New Secession) in Berlin, in which the budding Brücke painters also participated. Looking at Mueller’s paintings, it is easy to understand why the artist has so often been given the epithet “the quiet Expressionist.” Compared to the garish, almost aggressive works of Nolde and Pechstein, Mueller’s many portraits, landscapes and nudes are darker, more muted, verging on the introverted. In the undated painting Maschka mit Maske (Maschka with a Mask) we see a dark-haired young woman, dressed in a yellow blouse, staring back at us from over her shoulder with a critical, suspicious expression in her eyes, while a mask-like face watches in the background. And in Landschaft III (Landscape III) of ca. 1925, a tangle of dark tree trunks set against bright green grass, a forest and a bleak, jaundiced sky, convey a brooding, melancholy frame of mind. There is reason to believe that Mueller had gypsy blood, though this has never been proven. He certainly had a life-long interest in their way of living and customs and some of his best works are studies of gypsies. Though the artist neither denied nor substantiated rumors about his origins, the self-absorbed quality of many of his canvases suggest a man who is on a quest for self-discovery. Looking at Selbstbildnis mit Pentagramm (Self-Portrait with Pentagram) of 1922, the artist, half of whose face is in shadow, is a man who, though physically present, looks away from the viewer, thoughtful and seemingly uncomfortable. Even in his many nudes, such as Knabe vor zwei stehenden und einem sitzenden Mädchen (Boy in Front of Two Standing and One Sitting Girl) of 1918/19, the slender figures are turned away from us, very much part of their own world. Visiting this exhibition of Mueller’s work may not give the viewer the sense of familiarity and satisfaction that can be derived from looking at the paintings of better-known artists. Instead the spectator is confronted with a man who sought to express his innermost feelings through art, while keeping much of his personal life in darkness. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Mueller asked his wife, Maschka, to destroy more than 200 of his paintings in 1919, before he moved to Breslau, and that when he died in 1930 his entire belongings could be fitted into two cases. If you enjoy the excitement of discovering an artist through his work, then the Mueller exhibition is made for you. “Otto Mueller: Eine Retrospektive” is showing at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung until June 22. Open daily from 10 am to 8 pm.