Leo Putz - Frieda Blell vor dem Schloss Planegg, 1907

Frieda Blell (4 September 1874,

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...

- 5 March 1951,

Gauting Gauting is a municipality in the district of Starnberg, in Bavaria, Germany with a population of approximately 20,000. It is situated on the river Würm, southwest of Munich and is a part of the Munich metropolitan area. Geography Stockdorf, ...

) was a German landscape painter.

Life

She was born to a long-established family of cloth merchants. Her father, , was a wholesale dealer, who served in the Reichstag and the

Prussian Landtag The Landtag of Prussia (german: Preußischer Landtag) was the representative assembly of the Kingdom of Prussia implemented in 1849, a bicameral legislature consisting of the upper House of Lords (''Herrenhaus'') and the lower House of Representat ...

. He was not sympathetic to her artistic ambitions so, in 1900, she struck out on her own to study art in Munich. There, she met the

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

painter,

Leo Putz Leo Putz (18 June 1869, Merano, South Tyrol, Austria-Hungary – 21 July 1940, Merano, Kingdom of Italy) was a Tyrolean painter. His work encompasses Art Nouveau, Impressionism and the beginnings of Expressionism. Figures, nudes and landscapes ...

, and served as his model for several years. After 1909, they spent the Summers on the

Chiemsee Chiemsee () is a freshwater lake in Bavaria, Germany, near Rosenheim. It is often called "the Bavarian Sea". The rivers Tiroler Achen and Prien flow into the lake from the south, and the river Alz flows out towards the north. The Alz flows in ...

with their friends, the artist Clara Lotte von Marcard and her husband, the American painter,

Edward Cucuel Edward Cucuel (August 6, 1875, San Francisco – April 18, 1954, Pasadena, California), was an American-born painter who lived and worked in Germany. Life and work He was the son of a German newspaper publisher. At the age of fourteen he was al ...

. He also featured her in a few of his works, including "Herbstsonne", a depiction of the young Blell in the park by the lake shore near Castel Hartmannsberg. In 1913, she and Putz were married. Two years later, their son Helmut was born. She continued to paint, mostly landscapes and pictures of flowers for '' Jugend'' (Youth), a magazine in Munich. In 1923, they moved to

, where he specialized in nudes and scenes with boats. From 1929 to 1933, they lived in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

, where Leo had been appointed a Professor. Following the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

takeover, he expressed opposition to the new régime, and his works were declared to be "

degenerate Degeneracy, degenerate, or degeneration may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Degenerate (album), ''Degenerate'' (album), a 2010 album by the British band Trigger the Bloodshed * Degenerate art, a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party i ...

". As a result, rather than return to Germany, they went to live in his hometown of

Merano Merano (, , ) or Meran () is a city and ''comune'' in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Generally best known for its spa resorts, it is located within a basin, surrounded by mountains standing up to above sea level, at the entrance to the Passeier V ...

, Italy, where he died in 1940, following an operation. After the war, she returned to their old home in Gauting.

External links

1874 births 1951 deaths 20th-century German painters German women painters 20th-century German women artists People from Brandenburg {{Germany-painter-stub

Life

Further reading

External links