Adolf Rettelbusch

Johann Adolf Rettelbusch (* December 15 1858 in chamber Forestry; † January 8, 1934 in Magdeburg ) was a painter and is nicknamed chunks painter.

Life and work

Rettelbusch was born as the eighth child of a family of innkeepers. He attended from 1865 to 1873 the village school, then to 1878, the secondary school in Nordhausen, and then went to Weimar to the Grand Ducal School of Arts. Among his teachers were Theodor Hagen and Alexander Struys. He devoted himself to landscape painting. After he had to drop out for financial reasons the study, he put in Berlin in 1880 and in 1881 with Karl Gussow at the Royal Academy of Arts, a drawing teacher exam from.

Nevertheless, he remained unemployed. For two years, he returned to chamber Forestry and provided occasional work. From 1883 he studied at the educational establishment of the Museum of Decorative Arts Berlin, funded by a generous grant from Max Friedrich Koch, Ernst and Ernst Ewald Schaller an education in landscape, portrait and decorative painting. He received various awards.

1886 and 1887 undertook Adolf Rettelbusch a study trip to Italy. His drawings and watercolors made ​​there led to an offer of Preuss. Ministry of Trade and Industry to Rettelbusch, a job as a teacher of decorative painting and general to take over at the art and craft school Magdeburg. Rettelbusch agreed, and in 1887 a teacher and later vice- rector of the study program with the reformed under Edward spit newly opened school. Short term Rettelbusch had provisionally been head of the school in 1892. 1906 Rettelbusch was appointed professor; he remained until his retirement in 1924 at this school..

Rettelbusch was involved in the cultural life of the city of Magdeburg. He founded in 1893 the Association of Artists of St. Luke, which he headed for many years. In 1912 he was one of the founders of the artists' association beading. A long time he worked also on the board of the Kunstverein Magdeburg. He was also a member of the Masonic Lodge " Ferdinand to bliss ".

Artistic creation

Around 1925 Adolf Rettelbusch had acquired a reputation as the most important landscape painters of central Germany. A particular focus of his work was in this case, since a chunk ascent in 1887, the resin and the chunks. This earned him the name Brocken painter.

Rettelbusch but also created a variety of interior designs in churches, restaurants, castles and manor houses in and around Magdeburg. He mastered the full range of painting techniques. While he was beginning mainly used the watercolor technique, he then turned to the tempera painting and later the oil pastel drawing. From about 1914 he began with pastel painting and became one of the best pastel painters of his time.

He created portraits, plant studies, images from agriculture but also from industry ( Krupp - Gruson -Werk ). Many works were written while traveling abroad (eg Italy 1886/87, Spain in 1893, on the north -country trip in 1909, in the Alps, 1914). Other works deal with the First World War.

Honors

In 1928 he was made ​​an honorary citizen of chamber forest. The city of Magdeburg named a street in his honor ( Rettelbuschweg ).

Works

• Paintings in the commemorative stone at the Church of Kammerforst
• It originated about 4000 larger works. To a portion of these are located in Magdeburg Cultural History Museum. Several hundred are privately owned.
• Illustrations in the 1926 paper published in The chunks book
• Many works also hang in the race -Hotel Rettelbusch in chamber Forest, which is owned by the family today.