Carl Thiemann and some Dachau colleagues

To all readers:

Best Wishes for 2013

In this last posting of 2012 I'd intended writing a report of my virtual visit to Dachau (where I met Carl Olof Petersén discusssed in before posting) and of course running inevitably into printmaker Carl Thiemann (1881-1966).

Since this blog is not meant to be about world famous printmakers and other artists who already have been subject of more scholarly investigation I have been seriously in doubt whether to continue with todays posting. 

Thiemann upper, Ludwig Dill lower 

Adding something worthwhile reading (and sharing rarely seen prints) to the web that wasn’t previously there, or presenting some new context  is one of the rules and criteria I try to maintain after I've started this Blog following my personal discoveries.

Clockwise: Carl Thiemann, Ludwig Dill, Adolf Hölzel and Arthur Langhammer: Dachau moor and birches. The compositional meaning of every bend in the water and in the tree trunks has been subject of some kind of professional discussion. 

In the beginning, before Thiemann and Walter Klemm arrived in 1908 there was this trio of friends, painting and teaching in Dachau: the colorist Arthur Langhammer (1854-1901) who died young, theorist and later abstract artist  Adolf Hölzel (1853-1934) who left in 1905 and Ludwig Dill (1848-1940) who was never to leave and rediscovered the Dachau landscape. 

Thiemann and Ludwig Dill

Langhammer and Hölzel were very influenced after visiting Claude Monet (1840-1926) in Paris but it was Dill, a master of light and shadow, who came closest to Monet (poplars and haystacks) and van Gogh (cypresses and pines) concerning the series of outdoor created paintings of Dachau moor and its birches. Hölzel returning every summer to teach in his New Dachau Painting School.

Thiemann and Carl Moll (1861-1945) who worked in Vienna at the time

Reading about the art colony in Dachau and its painter-teachers and looking up their paintings I think it is nice to see and compare the things that awoke my curiosity trying to figure out how these artist and the landscape may have influenced each other and later students.

"Alte Kanalbrücke Dachauer moor", woodblock and painting by Carl Thiemann etching by Carl Felber (1880-1932). Felber, a painter etcher, shared the same teachers as Thiemann and also settled in Dachau and worked along the Mediteranian and Adriatic sea coast where teachers artists and students from Dachau and München moved to in summer. Felbers work of Dachau moors I intend showing   soon. 

Workmens houses along the canal by Carl Felbers.

There was Ferdinand Mirwald (1872-1948), an artist who also moved with his young family permanently to Dachau, arriving at the same time as Thiemann and Klemm in 1908. He was famed for his color woodblock prints although most of his work was lost and surviving prints are extremely rare. 

Left Mirwald, right Thiemann: Dachau, and Dachau moor canal.

Although the landscape around Dachau, its moors and waterways obviously had the same attraction to all painting artists todays availability and easy access of the internet of so many pictures makes it tempting to try and compare them.

 In later years the use of color changed dramatically in Thiemann's prints.

In the case of the printmaker Carl Thiemann it is astonishing to see how he was able to keep up with his painting colleagues and teachers in capturing the atmosphere of the place and its surroundings even with the limitations presented by the medium of the multi colored woodblock print. 

Carl Thiemann (1881-1966)

 Carl Johne (1887-1959)

Thiemann's birches obviously were an inspiration to Dutch printmaker Piet Rackwitz (1892-1968) whom I shall present in due time.

All pictures borrowed freely from the internet for friendly non commercial use only.