1st 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.
2nd 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.
3rd
and 4th 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 20th 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.
5th 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.
6th 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.
7th 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 49th birthday, his life ended in the Schwaz hospital.
The painter had only been granted two short decades of creativity.
8th 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.
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