BLACK

Forest

PAINTINGS

Spas, cuckoo clocks and women with red pollen on their heads. These are the common stereotypes of the Black Forest. When the view is narrowed to the traditional and touristy, it is sometimes forgotten that the mountainous region bordering France in southwest Germany is an area where art and culture flourish.

By NEUMEISTER expert Barbara Huber M. A.

Already in the first half of the 19th century, artists, writers and especially painters were drawn to the Scharzwald. Wilhelm Hasemann and Curt Liebich settled in Gutach and founded a painters' colony named after the town as a loose association. Artists from Berlin, Dresden, Weimar and Munich, Switzerland and France came to Gutach and left their mark on the Black Forest as a cultural landscape in the art of painting. Their works are in praise of the landscape, the striking farmhouses and the people in their traditional costumes with the world-famous Bollen hat. In the September auction, a small group of Black Forest paintings will be offered for sale. The portfolio includes works by Curt Liebich, Karl Hauptmann and Hermann Dischler.

Curt Liebich studied at the art academies in Dresden and Berlin. In 1890 he moved to the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Art in Weimar, where he met the Black Forest painter Wilhelm Hasemann, whose sister-in-law he married in 1896. After he settled in Gutach, motifs of the Black Forest dominated his work.

Born in Freiburg, Karl Hauptmann received his artistic training in Nuremberg and Munich. After his military service he bought a hut on the Herzogenhorn, the so-called "Molerhüsli", which was both his studio and his home. It is above all the Black Forest landscapes in winter that define Hauptmann's work.

Born in Freiburg, Karl Hauptmann received his artistic training in Nuremberg and Munich. After his war service, he bought a hut on the Herzogenhorn, the so-called "Molerhüsli", which was both his studio and his home. It is above all the Black Forest landscapes in winter that define Hauptmann's work.

Hermann Dischler made a name for himself as a "Schneemoler" (snow painter), for he, too, preferred to paint winter snow pictures - in addition to autumn landscapes and March atmospheres. In 1907, he built his "artists' house" in Hinterzarten, a high-altitude health resort in the southern Black Forest, where he organised permanent art exhibitions. Like Curt Liebich, Hermann Dischler belonged to the "Schwarzwäldern", an exhibition association from Baden.