3974 - Max Märtens, Chapel in the Mountains

Max Märtens, Chapel in the Mountains A light-filled, snow-covered Alpine landscape with a solitary chapel, watercolour on light-weight card, c. 1940, signed and inscribed ‘M. Märtens München", slight signs of ageing, mounted on backing board, sheet dimensions approx. 43.5 x 55 cm. Artist’s biography: German landscape painter (1887, Braunschweig - 1970, Gstadt/Chiemsee); initially a pupil at the Braunschweig School of Applied Arts, he studied at the Training Institute at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, then worked intermittently as a church painter and craftsman in Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart; settled in Munich from 1908, undertook study trips to Hungary and Italy; turned to landscape painting from 1918, in 1928 he made his first visit to Gstadt am Chiemsee, followed by regular stays at Lake Chiemsee; he was a member of the Reich Association of Visual Artists of Germany and the Lower Saxony Artists’ Association; from 1938 to 1944 he exhibited at the Great German Art Exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, In 1943, his home in Munich was destroyed by bombing and he moved to Gstadt am Chiemsee; here, in 1948, he was a founding member of the ‘Notgemeinschaft Bildender Künstler Gstadt’ (Gstadt Emergency Association of Visual Artists), which later renamed itself the ‘Gemeinschaft Bildender Künstler Chiemsee’ (Chiemsee Association of Visual Artists), served as its chairman from 1956 to 1969; sources: Vollmer and Saur, *Bio-Bibliographical Artists’ Encyclopaedia*; Bruckmann, *Munich Painters of the 19th and 20th Centuries*; Dressler; and the internet.