Hans Moller (b.

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 to ...

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1905 - d. October 19, 2000 in

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) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

-born American artist who worked mostly in an abstract format and is primarily considered to have been a colorist.

Biography

From 1919 until 1927, Moller was an instructor at the Kunstgewerbeschule Wuppertal-Barmen, an arts and crafts learning institution in the town in which he resided and also earned money as a

bricklayer A bricklayer, which is related to but different from a mason, is a craftsman and tradesman who lays bricks to construct brickwork. The terms also refer to personnel who use blocks to construct blockwork walls and other forms of masonry. ...

. Next he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts 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 ...

. In 1936, he emigrated to the United States from Germany to protect his Jewish wife (whom he had married in 1933), Helen Rosenblum from 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 Na ...

. Once settled in the U.S. he went to work for the advertising firm

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as a

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

and works of his from that endeavor were exhibited at

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as part of a group exhibition in 1949. The first solo exhibition of his paintings was held in 1942 at the Bonestell Gallery in

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. In the following twenty years or so he had some twenty five solo exhibitions at various galleries. Moller created paintings in a multiplicity of styles, including;

expressionism 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 ...

abstractionism Abstractionism is the theory that the mind obtains some or all of its concepts by abstracting them from concepts it already has, or from experience.Geach, Peter (1957) Mental Acts - Their Contents and Their Objects. Routledge Kegan Paul. One may, ...

surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

pointillism Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...

, and

fauvism Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' (French language, French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the Representation (arts), repr ...

. Later he was represented for a stretch ending in 1995 by the Midtown-Payson Gallery in New York City. Therein in 1995 the Dusseldorf gallerist Torsten Bröhan put together an exhibition of Moller's work; it was the first solo exhibition of Moller's work in

. Moller was known foremost as a colorist and once stated...“I only want to wake up every day and decide what colors to paint my sky.”.

Ad Reinhardt Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement center ...

included Moller in his 1946 work "How to Look at Modern Art in America".

Personal life

Moller and his wife were long time residents of

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. His wife Helen predeceased him in 1997. Hans Moller died in 2000.

Legacy

Following Moller's death a retrospective of the painter's work was mounted at the Lore Degenstein Gallery at

Susquehanna University Susquehanna University is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Its name is derived from the original Susquehannock settlers of the region. Founded in 1858 as a m ...

with an accompanying catalogue published by the

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. The exhibition then traveled around Pennsylvania from 2001 until 2002 and then to the

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

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. Moller's works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, the

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

, and the

Allentown Art Museum The Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley is an art museum located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1934 by a group organized by noted Pennsylvania impressionist painter, Walter Emerson Baum. With its collection of over 19,000 wo ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moller, Hans 1905 births 2000 deaths Artists from Wuppertal 20th-century German painters 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American painters German graphic designers Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States American graphic designers Painters from Pennsylvania Artists from Allentown, Pennsylvania