Hermann HENDRICH

WOTAN, 1919
Oil, canvas;100 x 74 cm
Signed p.d.: H. Hendrich 1919
On the reverse: portrait of a woman in an armchair
Hermann HENDRICH
1856 Heringen - 1931 Szklarska Poreba
He studied landscape painting from 1886-89 with Josef Wenglein in Munich and Eugen Bracht in Berlin, and returned to Berlin after traveling to Norway and the United States. He was a member of the Elf group (from 1895) and co-founder of the Berlin Secession. He created tabernacles of "total work," which arose from his fascination with Wagner's works, mysticism, nature and national myths. He erected the Walpurgis Hall on Hexentanzplatz in the Harz (1901), the Hall of Legends in Szklarska Poreba (1903), the Nibelung Hall near Königswinter (1913) and the Hall of German Legends in Burg der Wupper (1926). His paintings were exhibited in all of them. From the late 1890s until his death, he lived in Szklarska Poreba.
Hermann Hendrich's work was influenced by a trip to Norway twice (1876, 1885). He was captivated by the heroic landscape, mysterious sagas and mystical spiritualism of old wooden churches. His landscapes gained symbolic references.
The second element that exerted an overwhelming influence on him was the world of Wagner's characters and the idea of Gesamtkunswerk - a total work, a synthesis of the arts - postulated and realized by Wagner. The composer's profound influence on the painter's work was revealed, with an original and independent interpretation of Germanic mythology.
In Hermann Hendrich's art there are clear parallels to the neo-romantic, symbolic painting of Arnold Böcklin. Expressive tendencies are pronounced in the formal qualities of his art. Hendrich took advantage of the technical and aesthetic possibilities offered by the new art trends, but treated them as tools for building his own ideological artistic visions. For Hermann Hendrich was a painter with crystallized views, a declared and consistent symbolist.
Wotan - the main god of Germanic mythology. One of the most important characters of Richard Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungs".
Asking price 10000
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