Heinrich Maria Davringhausen (21 October 1894 – 13 December 1970) was a German painter associated with 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, who ...

. Davringhausen was born in

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

. Mostly self-taught as a painter, he began as a sculptor, studying briefly at the

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

Academy of Arts before participating in a group exhibition at

Alfred Flechtheim Alfred Flechtheim (1 April 1878 – 9 March 1937) was a German Jewish art dealer, art collector, journalist and publisher persecuted by the Nazis. Early years Flechtheim was born into a Jewish merchant family; his father, Emil Flechtheim, was a g ...

's gallery in 1914. He also traveled to

Ascona 300px, Ascona Ascona ( lmo, label= Ticinese, Scona ) is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. It is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore. The town is a popular tourist destination and holds the yea ...

with his friend the painter

Carlo Mense Carlo Mense (May 13, 1886 – August 11, 1965) was a German artist, associated at various times with the Düsseldorf school of painting, Rhenish Expressionism and New Objectivity. Mense was born in Rheine. He studied with Peter Janssen at th ...

that year. At this early stage his paintings were influenced by the

expressionists 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 ...

, especially

August Macke August Robert Ludwig Macke (3 January 1887 – 26 September 1914) was a German Expressionist painter. He was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). He lived during a particularly act ...

. Having lost his left eye during his adolescence, Davringhausen was exempted from military service in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

.Rewald, Sabine, Ian Buruma, Matthias Eberle, Metropolitan Museum of Art (2006).
Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s
'. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 60. From 1915 to 1918, he lived in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

where he became part of a group of left-wing artists that included

Herwarth Walden Herwarth Walden (actual name Georg Lewin; 16 September 1879, in Berlin – 31 October 1941, in Saratov, Russia) was a German expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines. He is broadly acknowledged as one of the most important discove ...

and

John Heartfield John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements ...

. In 1919 he had a solo exhibition at Hans Goltz' Galerie Neue Kunst in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, and exhibited in the first "Young Rhineland" exhibition in Düsseldorf.Michalski 1994, p. 209 Davringhausen became a member of the "Novembergruppe" and gained some prominence among the artists representing a new tendency in German art of the postwar period. In 1925 he participated in the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) exhibition in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's 2 ...

which brought together many leading "post-expressionist" artists, including Grosz,

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with Geor ...

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...

Alexander Kanoldt Alexander Kanoldt (29 September 1881 – 24 January 1939) was a German magic realist painter and one of the artists of the New Objectivity. Early life and education Alexander Kanoldt was born on 29 September 1881 in Karlsruhe in Baden-Württ ...

and

Georg Schrimpf Georg Schrimpf (13 February 1889 – 19 April 1938) was a German painter and graphic artist. Along with Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, Schrimpf is broadly acknowledged as a main representative of the art movement ''Neue Sachlichkei ...

. Davringhausen went into exile with the fall of the

Weimar republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...

in 1933, first going to

Majorca Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest island in the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean. The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Bal ...

, then to France. In Germany approximately 200 of his works were removed from public

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

s by 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 ...

s on the grounds that they were

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, ...

. Prohibited from exhibiting, Davringhausen was interned in

Cagnes-sur-Mer Cagnes-sur-Mer (, literally ''Cagnes on Sea''; oc, Canha de Mar) is a French Riviera town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. Geography Cagnes-sur-Mer is a town in south-eastern ...

but fled to Côte D' Azur. In 1945 however he returned to Cagnes-sur-Mer, a suburb of

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...

, where he remained for the rest of his life. He worked as an abstract painter under the name Henri Davring until his death in

in 1970.Michalski 1994, pp. 84, 209 A major work from Davringhausen's New Objectivity period is ''Der Schieber'' (''The Black-Marketeer''), a Magic realist painting of 1920–21, which is in the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf im Ehrenhof. Painted in acidulous colors, it depicts a glowering businessman seated at his desk in a modern office suite that foreshortens dramatically behind him.Von Kalnein, Wend. "Düsseldorf. Kunstmuseum". ''Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch'', vol. 39, 1977, pp. 271–273 Before him are a pen and a telephone—the tools by which a paper fortune is made—alongside an open box of cigars and a glass of wine that symbolize his social class. The office windows open onto a bleak scene of severely geometric skyscrapers, a style of building that did not yet exist in 1921. Although Davringhausen rarely presented social criticism in his work, in ''Der Schieber'' "the artist created the classic pictorial symbol of the period of inflation that was commencing". Much of Davringhausen's work was deposited in 1989 in the Leopold Hoesch museum in

Düren Düren (; ripuarian: Düre) is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, between Aachen and Cologne on the river Rur. History Roman era The area of Düren was part of Gallia Belgica, more specifically the territory of the Eburones, a people ...

, which has subsequently organized several exhibitions of his pictures, above all those from the later period.

Notes

References

*Eimert, Dorothea (1995). '' Heinrich Maria Davringhausen 1894 - 1970.'' Cologne. *Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). ''New Objectivity''. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. *Schmied, Wieland (1978). ''Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties''. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.

External links

*http://www.davringhausen.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Davringhausen, Heinrich Maria 1894 births 1970 deaths 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German male painters Modern painters

See also

Notes

References

External links