Wilhelm Schnarrenberger
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Wilhelm_Schnarrenberger_Bernau_Hans-Thoma-Preis_Willy_Pragher_1962.jpg/220px-Wilhelm_Schnarrenberger_Bernau_Hans-Thoma-Preis_Willy_Pragher_1962.jpg)
Wilhelm Schnarrenberger (June 30, 1892 – April 12, 1966) was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity.
He was born in Buchen. From 1911 to 1916 he studied at the Munich School of Arts and Crafts.[1] He had his first solo exhibition in 1916 at Hans Goltz' gallery in Munich.[1] In that same year he began a period of military service.[2]
By 1920 he had returned to Munich, where he contributed illustrations to magazines such as Simplicissimus and Wieland.[1] In 1921 he was made a professor of commercial art at the Karlsruhe Academy[1] and joined the "Rih" group of artists that included Karl Hubbuch, Rudolph Schlichter, and Georg Scholz.[2] At about this time, he published a series of lithographs of meticulously rendered landscape scenes.[2]
The influence of Henri Rousseau is evident in Schnarrenberger's work of the early 1920s. Paintings such as Old Men Going for a Walk (1922) adopt a deliberately naive approach to composition and the depiction of the figures.[3] By 1924, when Schnarrenberger painted The Friends, his work fully exemplified the New Objectivity style in its sharp-edged, dispassionate rendering of a prosaic contemporary scene. According to art historian Sergiusz Michalski, "Schnarrenberger almost demonstratively refrains from portraying an emotional link between the persons in the picture."[4]
In 1925 Schnarrenberger's paintings were included in the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity") exhibition organized by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim.[2]
By 1929, Schnarrenberger had begun to paint in a looser style. His work met with official disfavor during the Nazi era: In 1933 he was dismissed from his teaching job, and in 1937 he was declared a degenerate artist.[2] From 1938 until 1947 he lived in Lenzkirch. In 1947 he regained his position as a professor the Karlsruhe Academy, and he relocated to Karlsruhe in 1948.[1] In 1955 he began exhibiting with the Baden-Wurttemberg Federation of Artists. He was awarded the Hans Thoma State Prize in 1962.[1]
Schnarrenberger died in Karlsruhe in 1966.
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- Metken, G. (1981). Realismus: zwischen Revolution und Reaktion, 1919-1939. München: Prestel-Verlag. ISBN 3791305409
- Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0