3835 - Fritz Schaefler, "Heinrich Wölfflin"

Fritz Schaefler, "Heinrich Wölfflin" Portrait of the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864, Winterthur - 1945, Zurich), a powerful etching with pronounced flat tones on laid paper, c. 1925 (date of the plate), signed ‘Schaefler’ in lead to the right of the image and numbered ‘74/100’ to the left, slight signs of wear, image dimensions approx. 39.5 x 33 cm, sheet dimensions approx. 76 x 53.5 cm. Artist’s biography: German painter, graphic artist, fresco painter, interior and stained-glass window designer of the Expressionist movement, as well as stage designer and scenographer (1888, Eschau in the Spessart - 1954, Cologne), spent his childhood in Eschau; attended school in Aschaffenburg from 1899 to 1900; moved to Eggenfelden in Lower Bavaria in 1900; attended grammar school and boarding school in Landshut until 1905; studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich from 1905, In 1906, transferred to the Royal School of Applied Arts in Munich; studied at the Munich Academy under Martin Feuerstein and Angelo Jank from 1908 to 1911; from 1910, worked as a freelance artist in his own studio in Munich-Schwabing and spent regular periods at Simssee near Rosenheim, 1914-17: served in the First World War and was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme; 1915-17: represented in exhibitions of the Berlin and Munich Secession, 1918-19: active participation in the Munich Soviet Republic; member and secretary of the ‘Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists’ and editor for the visual arts of the cultural-revolutionary journal *Der Weg*; 1919: Fled to Alfred Kubin’s home in Wernstein; 1920: Moved to Ernsdorf near Prien am Chiemsee and later to Prien; 1923: Travelled to Italy with Kurt Gerstenberg, with financial support from the Rhineland Jewish industrialist Joseph Heymann (1887-1954), In 1927, on the advice of his friend, the architect Hans Hansen, he moved to Cologne; in 1937, he was ostracised as ‘degenerate’ and banned from painting, 1942-45: Fled the turmoil of the war to Remerscheid (Engelskirchen) in the Bergisches Land; 1945: Returned to Cologne and taught at Cologne’s vocational schools, whilst making regular visits to the Bergisches Land; maintained contacts with the avant-garde artists of the time, such as Klee, Felixmüller, Schmidt-Rottluff, Campendonk, Feininger, Heckel, Schrimpf, Davringhausen and others; member of the German Artists’ Association in Weimar, active in Cologne; source: Thieme-Becker, Vollmer, Saur, *Bio-Bibliographical Artists’ Encyclopaedia*, Dressler, Flemig, the website of his grandson Christoph Schaefler, the register of the Munich Academy and the internet.