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Ludwig Meidner

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Ludwig Meidner
Artist's Name: Ludwig Meidner
Preferred medium: painting
birth year: 1884
Nationality: DE
City: Darmstadt

Ludwig Meidner - Profile

Following his parents' wishes the young Meidner began an apprenticeship as a mason, but broke it off. In 1903 he was admitted to the Breslau Academy for Fine Art and the Applied arts, which he left after two years to move to Berlin. The instruction he took in etching from the artist Hermann Struck was important for his later career. Meidner only did a few paintings in his early Berlin years: 'Industrial Urban Landscapes', which resemble the work of the French Fauves formally and in the palette he chose for them. Meidner was interested in the aggressive suppression of nature by the expanding metropolis, which he described as eerily menacing, rather than the aesthetic of urban architecture. In 1906 he went for about a year to Paris, where he met Amedeo Modigliani. The years that followed in Berlin saw Meidner haunted by dire financial straits although he intensively experienced Expressionist bohemian life. His favourite sitters were the men of letters who were his friends. The year 1912 was an important one for the artist: he painted the first of his compelling self-portraits and 'Apocalyptic Landscapes'. He also joined forces with Jacob Steinhardt and Richard Janthur to found 'Die Pathetiker' ['The Exponents of Pathos'], a group that showed their works at Der Sturm, Herwarth Walden's gallery. There he met Robert Delaunay, whose Orphic Cubism, with Italian Futurism, inspired his style. Plagued by existential fears, he turned to painting religious themes. Conscripted into the military in 1916, Meider served as an interpreter and censor at an internment camp for prisoners of war. There he began to write. After the war he joined the 'Novembergruppe' ['November Group'] and the revolutionary 'Arbeitsrat der Kunst' ['Workers' Council for Art'] in 1918. Disappointed at the failure of the Revolution, the artist retired to nurse his disillusionment in private, abandoning Expressionism, which by then was so popular that its commercial outlook increasingly brightened. In 'Autobiographische Plauderei' ['Autobiographical Chat'] he offended companions and friends by repudiating his early work. Religious themes, landscapes, still lifes and more portraits would thenceforth be his dominant genres. Denounced as 'degenerate' in 1933 and persecuted because he was a Jew, the painter emigrated to England, only returning to Germany in 1953. In a last, very productive, creative phase he further developed the style of painterly realism he had developed in the 1920s. (Ketterer Kunst)

important exhibitions from Ludwig Meidner

Exhibition Location City Country Date
46. Biennale Venedig 1995 Biennale Venedig Venedig IT 12.06.1995
Kollwitz - Beckmann - Dix - Grosz. Kriegszeit Staatsgalerie Stuttgart Stuttgart DE 30.04.2011
Melanie Gugelmann - Im Dickicht der Städte Kunsthaus Zürich Zürich CH 30.11.2007
Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-44. Ben Uri Gallery London GB 21.08.2011
Berlin-Tokyo / Tokyo-Berlin Mori Art Museum Tokyo JP 28.01.2006
Berlin-Tokyo / Tokyo-Berlin Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin Berlin DE 07.06.2006
From Dürer to Kiefer Kunsthal Rotterdam Rotterdam NL 13.06.2009
Tokyo - Berlin / Berlin - Tokyo Mori Art Museum Tokyo JP 28.01.2006
Weltsichten: Landschaft in der Kunst vom 17. bis 21. Jahrhundert Situation Kunst Bochum Bochum DE 08.05.2010

artist's website


external Link to the website of the artist or his gallery/institution:
Ludwig Meidner

Galleries representing
Ludwig Meidner:

Bernd Dürr GmbH
Fischer Kunsthandel
Galerie Haas AG
Galerie Schlichtenmaier - Grafenau
Michael Hasenclever

Collections representing
Ludwig Meidner

Deutsche Bank Collection
Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin