1^st Block - Introduction
The Twenties were not for everyone such gilded times as are generally represented in literary retrospectives, particularly not for the artists who, at that time, were just beginning their careers. This is what happened to Christian Hess - a European-styled personality who was born in Bozen and died at Schwaz - in the history of his life and in his artistic attitude. With his art, Hess created a kind of objection to his tension-laded life conditions, just as against the relations of the time that, as a rule, were becoming quite conflicting.
The painter found his central source of inspiration in Sicily.

2^nd Block - First stay in Sicily.
Christian Hess went to Sicily for the first time in 1925. He was a thirty-year old painter who, owing to the protraction of the war, had only been able to complete his studies at the Munich Academy a year earlier. The first stop in his journey through Italy was Florence where, at Palazzo Pitti, Hess copied the ancient masters for German collectors – works on commissions that were to cover the costs of his journey. With great prospects, he moved on to Sicily as his sister Emma had written to him enthusiastic letters from Messina. Emma, who had just married in this Sicilian seafaring town, was one of the few survivors of his family with whom he had maintained a particularly close relationship, although she had not promised him much. The first few impressions in Sicily where enough to disclose to the painter a definitely new world, with its humanity, works that had remained incomplete for centuries, landscapes throbbing with ancient myths, the matchless Mediterranean light. This could be heaven, Hess wrote to a fellow artist and friend in Germany. Enthusiastically, the painter threw himself into a variety of motifs and, however slowly, he found the equivalent for his artistic experience. He knew that he would never abandon this country.

3^rd and 4^th Blocks - Stops in Bozen, Innsbruck, Munich – Member of the Juryfreien.
In his return journey, Christian Hess stopped over in Bozen and Innsbruck, the first places he had met with in his life. Bozen was his native town; the building at the northern corner between the Arcades and the fruit market had been his parents’ house. His father, who had originally come from Württenberg, had worked here as an official. After his premature death in 1905, Christian Hess had moved with his mother and two sisters to Innsbruck where a few of their relatives lived. From the gymnasium, he had moved on to a technical state school more in keeping with his interests and bents. He had gained his initial professional experience in a glassworks and mosaic laboratory in Tyrol that used to supply its decorative products to half the world. Until the war came. Being a German citizen, Hess had to go to the Belgian front and in the north of France where he was confronted with atrocities beyond any understanding, although his etchings (postcards) expressed nothing of that sort. For Hess, what lingered on was an incessant tension for independence and skepticism towards the authorities. As soon as the war ended, Christian Hess – who was by then twenty-four years old – was finally able to pursue his much longed for academic studies. The choice fell on Munich that, together with Vienna, had been the traditional place where the artists from Tyrol were trained. His teacher was Carl Becker Gundhal, a painter who was on the watershed between painting “en plein air” and Expressionism. For Hess, these years of study were a period that welded together a variety of formal and technical possibilities down to sculpture. The luminous expressive capacity that may be caught in the picture of his atelier in Theresienstrasse still points to a late Expressionism. With these different stylistic approaches, Hess reflects the general artistic situation in Munich during the period after the war.

- Interview with Horst G. Ludwig, expert of the Munich Art in the 20^th Century.
Besides, during these years, Hess strived to establish an immediate contact with the international moderns that, after the stormy break at the beginning of the century, in the post war period tended once again, according to a strengthened tradition, towards order and concreteness. An important forum for Hess was the association of the Juryfreien artists with whom he regularly exhibited his works and among whom he was considered a leading member.

- Interview with Horst G. Ludwig (cont.)
Besides the cubist and abstract artists, it was especially in Max Beckmann and Carl Hofer that Christian Hess found a lead. He had established personal contacts with both painters. In Beckmann, Hess perceived the force of the visionary expression of forms and colors, with the black profiles dominating the picture. In Hofer, Hess perceived a more reserved conception impregnated by melancholy and fine color effects.
Within this system of stylistic coordinates, which was later enhanced by emotions through the Italian artists of the 20th century, Hess developed his creativity. His interest focused on the person that, full of mystery, was also present in landscapes even though not represented. The artist had a special preference for the representation of women, models putting on make-up, at rest, in the atelier. At first glance, all these pictures seem to be pervaded by sinuous and calm compositions and differentiated color shades. Even the yearning for harmony and ideal is interrupted by the expressive tensions inherent in the painter’s experiences. The awareness of feeling left out and melancholy stretch like a red thread through his work. With the “Chess Player”, Hess offered a distressing sensation of the period between the two wars, almost like a second Tyrolese pictorial matrix of his.

5^th Block - Sicily
Sicily was for Hess the other world, increasingly farther away from the world in Munich marked by the present. Between 1925 and 1938, he spent almost half his time in Messina. There, he allowed himself to be carried away by the archaic world of fishermen and farmers, by the landscape in the solar glory of the South and by the testimonies of a history full of turning points. His glance took in the monuments of the town, like the famous fountain of the Neptune dating back to 1557. He looked for the lagoons in the village of Ganzirri, well known for its world of fishermen. Besides, he was fascinated by the view from his terrace at the seaside. He paid special attention to the bronze monument of Don John of Austria, the winner against the Turks at Lepanto. Many of these motifs were rendered by the painter through spontaneous and colorful watercolors. At his sister’s house and with her family, Christian Hess found a homely environment that was unknown to him.
Interview with Atonia Starrentino, the painter’s niece
Unlike the pictures painted in Munich, which generally depicted interiors, in Sicily Hess opened his artistic interest to the multiplicity of life: from images of nature and compositions up to everyday life, interpreted in a symbolic manner. The painter as a rower: he tends to observe the premises but, in the end, he remains a spectator, a stranger in their world. A few structural and still life pictures have a special formal allure, such as “The Pigeons on the Terrace” with their thin coloring, the almost abstract “Red-Black Roofs” and the nearly Frenchified still life with gazette.

6^th  Block - Munich and Switzerland
The harsh reality in Germany at the beginning of the Thirties grew worse. Unemployment, which had broken out in consequence of the worldwide economic crisis, thoroughly upset the social system. “The forecasts for the future are no longer rosy”, wrote Hess in 1932 to his sister - neither politically nor economically”. A year later, Hitler was in power and ideological equality crossed many life ambits. During the same year, the Führer laid the foundation stone of the House of German Art in Munich. The Juryfreie was disbanded as a politically suspect association. This time, Hess’ departure from Munich on his way to Sicily looked like an escape. Meantime, he was offered there a few weeks of profitable work, but his poor financial situation drove him to Switzerland where he had the possibility of painting on commission. The participation in major exhibitions as those previously held in Munich, Düsseldorf or Berlin was no longer conceivable. “It is a bitter time”- he noted in a letter to his sister – “There is nothing to be attained with painting. Please send me a few recipes. I am going to turn into a cook”. Instead, Hess married Cecilia Faesy, the daughter of a Swiss banker who was to be of great help to him in the sale of his pictures. It was to be a short episode: his marriage lasted only two years. The few works he painted in Switzerland included sketches of a boat trip and a view of the town of Lucerne. Hess was bound to leave his pictures unsigned since he had no official permit to work in Switzerland. In Germany, in the meantime, the totalitarian impact placed new limitations to art. What German painting was supposed to be was unequivocally specified by Hitler in his speech for the opening of the German Art House in 1937: “Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, etc. have nothing to do with our German people, since all these concepts are nothing but exhibitions of persons who lack any true artistic vocation. Therefore, we shall wage a relentless cleansing war against the last few elements of degeneration of our culture”. A transposition of this announcement was represented by the “Degenerate Art” exhibition where whatever was modern - from Marc to Kandinsky, from Kokoska to Hofer - was denigrated. The growing feeling of isolation in Sicily, which took him on the edge of suicide, such as the impossibility of staying in Switzerland, caused Hess to return to Munich in 1938. In the meantime, he succeeded in enrolling in the Reich’s Chamber of Culture, but he was soon recruited into the war Postal Service. He fell ill with tuberculosis and his last residence in Munich was the Schwabing hospital.

7^th Block – Hess’ last few years of life and his death in Tyrol
In 1941, relieved of his military service, Hess returned to Tyrol, his native land. Here, since the annexation, the artists were subject to the same laws that applied to the old empire. The changes appeared to be less drastic. On the one hand, as most artists tended more to tradition than to modernity, they had fewer problems in adjusting to the new relations. On the other, the director of the Chamber of Tyrolese Artists, Max von Esterle, saw to their protection from the attacks of politics. Hess was also offered by Von Esterle an atelier in the ancient University of Innsbruck. The painter showed up only once with a mythological composition.
As he happened to write, he found his escape from the unbearable conditions of the times in the Greek classics and a few glasses of wine. When, on November 23, 1944, the bombs of the allies fell for the umpteenth time on Innsbruck, Christian Hess moved from his hotel room down into the road and waited. Three days later, just before his 49^th birthday, his life ended in the Schwaz hospital.
The painter had only been granted two short decades of creativity.

8^th Block - End
Christian Hess numbers among those painters of the period between the two world wars whose difficult relations denied them valid recognitions. This is the reason why Hess - an artist who, as a Tyrolese, had been forgotten in Munich or, as a German, in both Tyrol and Italy - failed to appear even in the major anthological exhibition of classical and  modern artists organized in Tyrol in 1973.
His rediscovery dates back to a year later, owing to the happy occasion that a considerable part of his creations had been preserved.
Interview with Nuccio Cinquegrani
Starting from his rediscovery, Christian Hess may no longer be conceived outside the art history of the period between the two wars being a painter who, in spite or, indeed, on account of adverse conditions, created works characterized by a definite wealth of both form and contents.