Hoerle Denkmal der unbekannten Prothesen 1930

Heinrich Hoerle (1 September 1895 – 7 July 1936) was a German constructivist artist of the

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, wh ...

movement. Hoerle was born in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

. He studied at the Cologne School of Arts and Crafts but was mostly self-taught as an artist. After military service in World War I he met

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert Franz Wilhelm Seiwert (March 9, 1894 – July 3, 1933) was a German painter and sculptor in a constructivist style. He was also politically active as a communist making significant contributions, both graphic and theoretical to ''Die Aktion' ...

in 1919 and worked with him on the journal ''Ventilator''.Schmied 1978, p. 127. Together with his wife Angelika (1899–1923), Hoerle became active in the Cologne

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

scene. He co-founded the artists' group

Stupid Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, or wit. It may be innate, assumed or reactive. The word ''stupid'' comes from the Latin word ''stupere''. Stupid characters are often used for comedy in fictional stories. Walter B ...

, and in 1920 he published the ''Krüppelmappe'' (''Cripples Portfolio''). Hoerle's work retained a certain dour absurdism after he adopted a figurative constructivist style influenced by the

Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 '' Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...

Vladimir Tatlin Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin ( – 31 May 1953) was a Russian and USSR, Soviet painter, architect and stage-designer. Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed The Monument to the Third International, more commonly known as Tatlin's Towe ...

and

El Lissitzky Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, ; – 30 December 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Эль Лиси́цкий; yi, על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist ...

, by Fernand Léger, and by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

movement

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...

. His paintings feature generic-looking figures, presented in strict profile or in stiff, frontal poses. In 1929 he began collaboration with Seiwert and Walter Stern on the publication of "a-z", the journal of the Cologne Progressives art group. He was among the many German artists whose works were condemned as

degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

when the

Nazis 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 N ...

took power in 1933.Michalski 1994, p. 212. He died in Cologne in 1936 at the age of 40. Public collections holding works by Heinrich Hoerle include

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy ...

, Cologne; Kölnisches Stadtmuseum; ; The

Von der Heydt Museum The Von der Heydt Museum is a museum in Wuppertal, Germany. The Von der Heydt Museum includes works by artists from the 17th century to the present time. History The museum is housed in the former city hall of Elberfeld, which in 1902 became a ...

Wuppertal Wuppertal (; "''Wupper Dale''") is, with a population of approximately 355,000, the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city of Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and tow ...

; and the

Busch-Reisinger Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Notes

References

* Backes, Dirk; Wolfram Hagspiel and Wulf Herzogenrath (1981). ''Heinrich Hoerle, Leben und Werk 1895–1936''. Cologne. (Ausstellungskatalog Kölnischer Kunstverein) * Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). ''New Objectivity''. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. * Poore, Carol (2007). ''Disability in twentieth-century German culture''. University of Michigan Press. *Schmied, Wieland (1978). ''Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties''. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. 1895 births 1936 deaths 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German male painters Dada {{Germany-artist-stub