Adolf Dietrich

Adolf Dietrich ( born November 9, 1877 in Berlingen; † July 4, 1957 ) was a Swiss painter who is associated with the New Objectivity and at the same time was also a major representative of naive painting.

Life

Adolf Dietrich was born on November 9, 1877 in a small modest house in Berlingen (TG ), born as the seventh child of Heinrich Dietrich and Dorothea core. As a boy he collected much and tried to imitate everything and draw. From 1885 to 1893 he attended primary school. He was a good and diligent student. His teacher recognized his talent for drawing and encouraged them. His parents, he recommended that her son should make a lithographer. But the family was poor and Adolf had to learn a profession, in which he earned more. So he began in a shirt factory in Berlingen to work. Painted on Sunday and he was passionate. 1896-1910 he worked at home as a machine knitters. He was fascinated more and more the nature with its secrets and wonders. He began a first sketch book and it was followed by a dozen magnificent animal watercolors. 1902 closed Dietrich friendship with Friedrich Neeser, a baker, who painted also. Together they spent Sundays in nature, because Frederick possessed the same nature obsession. He encouraged the serious and somewhat fearful Adolf, not to give up painting. 1903 Dietrich recorded his first self -portrait with charcoal. On behalf of his brother, who lived in Ludwigshafen (D), he painted a portrait of his parents. In the same year his mother died. From then on, Dietrich lived alone with his father in a small house in Berlingen. Homework on the knitting machine helped to cope with the daily financial worries. For technical reasons, but he soon gave up the homework and earned his living as forest workers. In 1913 he presented the first of his pictures in Konstanz (D) Whose Berghaus. This was followed by other exhibitions in various galleries in Germany. 1918 his father died. This loss made ​​it difficult to create. But he soon overcame this crisis and was discovered by the art dealer Dr. Herbert Tannenbaum. This enabled Dietrich at various locations in Germany issue. He strove with the greatest use to make Dietrich also known in Switzerland, and soon reached approvals for exhibitions in Zurich (1942 ) and Schaffhausen (1933, 1952). In 1924, Dietrich was able to live from his painting. In 1937 he made ​​his international breakthrough and could participate in exhibitions in Paris, London and New York. It was not until 1941, earned his home canton of Thurgau a picture of him. As of 1942, the demand was so great by his pictures that he copied own pictures and the same image promised several people simultaneously. Until his death he painted, he died on July 4, 1957 in his home in Berlingen and has in the cemetery there is a grave of honor.

His painting

Topics: Adolf Dietrich was fascinated since childhood by the nature and the animals. He owned many stuffed animals that he loomed. He often drew his garden or Lake Constance and also painted portraits, and various still life.

Style: Adolf Dietrich had no academic training as a painter. This is noticeable, as in his paintings, for example, the perspective is often misrepresented. He always drew very accurately, so his pictures are very realistic. His style is to be sorted by art historians on the one hand and on the other hand the naive painting of the New Objectivity.

Style of painting: At the beginning, Adolf Dietrich made ​​his wanderings pencil drawings in his sketchbooks, 18 are still preserved today. To 1929, he began to make black -and-white photographs, there are still several thousand photos available. He never painted in nature, but always produced only a sketch, which he then in the house painted from memory with color. He never used an easel, always painted his pictures with him in the living room on the table, often in bad light. His techniques were gouache, watercolor, charcoal drawing, oil painting, pencil sketch.

Supports: In the beginning he painted on cardboard, later on wood, but never on canvas. For this reason, quite a lot of pictures are in a delicate state.

Famous paintings

• Girl with cockchafer, 1923. Privately owned.
• Pepper Bird, 1927. Wessenberg Gallery Konstanz.
• Evening at the submarine, 1932
• Self-portrait, 1932. Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Charterhouse.
• Garden with geraniums at the window, 1933. Privately owned.
• Shipwreck before Berlingen, 1935. Bürgergemeinde Berlingen. (Displays the boiler explosion of the Rhine Falls 1869).
• Girl with Dog, 1935
• Blackbirds, 1936
• View through trees on Berlingen, 1938. Privately owned.
• Balbo Lying on the grass, 1955. Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Charterhouse.

Commemoration

Museums

• Adolf Dietrich House: The Adolf Dietrich- house in the lake road in the Swiss Berlingen the submarine was redesigned by the Thurgau Art Society as a museum. It can be visited today. It was the birth, labor and home of Adolf Dietrich. Upstairs the house the painting studio has remained unchanged. On the ground floor a small documentary about the life and work of the artist is furnished with a small museum shop. Seestrasse 26, 8267 Berlingen.

• Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Charterhouse, Warth / TG: The whole estate Dietrich went in 1957 to the Thurgauische Art Society. He is archived, and is always a group of works on display.

Film

• Adolf Dietrich, painter 1877-1957. Documentary. Written and directed by Friedrich Kappeler, Switzerland, 1990, 90 minutes.
• Sky blue - green grass. Ad. Dietrich 1877-1957. Documentary. Written and directed by Robert Weiss, SF DRS 1977 Duration 50 minutes.