Parisian Bohemian

The painter and graphic artist Albert Weisgerber, born in St. Ingbert in Saarland, received his training at the Kaiserslautern Kreisbauschule, the Munich School of Applied Arts, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Apart from a few short stays in Paris in 1905/07, which gave him decisive impulses, his main place of residence was Munich. He worked for the magazines Simplizissimus und Jugend, and in 1913, together with Jawlenski, Paul Klee, and others, he founded the Neue Münchner Secession, of which he became the first president.

While he adopted a Parisian theme with the Reclining Nude, he soon turned to biblical figures such as Absalom, Jeremiah, David and Goliath, and above all to Saint Sebastian as a struggling and suffering human being.

His voluntary enlistment for military service in August 1914 – at the age of thirty-six – seems to contrast with his openness to the world in his earlier years.

Weisgerber was considered degenerate by the Nazis, and art historians only turned to analyzing and reassessing his work after the Second World War.