Thursday, September 16, 2021

Franz von Stuck (Munich's Painter Prince)

Franz von Stuck
Cover of Pan
1895
lithograph
Universitäts Bibliothek, Heidelberg

Franz von Stuck
The Lost (Faun in Snow)
1891
oil on canvas
Belvedere Palace, Vienna

Franz von Stuck
Expulsion from Paradise
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Franz von Stuck
Pietà
1891
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Franz von Stuck
Chasse Fantastique
1890
oil on canvas
Villa Stuck, Munich

Franz von Stuck
Mermaid
1891
oil on panel
private collection

Franz von Stuck (designer)
Dancers
1897-98
bronze relief
Villa Stuck, Munich

Franz von Stuck
Self Portrait in the Studio
1905
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Franz von Stuck
The Walk
1903
oil on canvas
Museum Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt

Franz von Stuck
The Seesaw
1898
oil on canvas
Villa Stuck, Munich

Franz von Stuck
The Struggle for Woman
1905
oil on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Franz von Stuck
Salome
1906
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Franz von Stuck
The Sin
1893
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Franz von Stuck
The Sin
1912
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Franz von Stuck
The Sin (detail)
1912
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

"Though he was a professor at Munich's Akademie der Bildenden Künste, the art of Franz von Stuck marked a departure from both the Academic and Realist styles that had dominated European art during the second half of the 19th century.  "When choosing my subject matter, I seek to render only the purely human, the eternally valid," said the artist in an interview in 1912, and overarching themes of Stuck's work include preoccupations with love, lust, violence and chaos, often explored through a mythological or allegorical lens.  . . .  A founder-member of Munich's Secession, the city's premier avant-garde artists' association, in 1892, Stuck's career bridged the progressive and official sides of Munich's art world.  His success during the 1890s and first decade of the new century was such that he was able to construct a palatial villa in Munich, which is now a museum dedicated to his work.  . . .  Though by the beginning of the First World War Stuck's signature style would come to be regarded as excessive and vulgar, his interest in extreme emotional states and his expressive manipulation of color, space, and form were eminently modern.  . . .  For much of the last century art historians disregarded Stuck's work, and Symbolism generally, as an aberration in the narrative which connects 19th and 20th century painting, but recent studies have finally begun to acknowledge the innovation and importance of Munich's "painter prince" in the development of modern art."

– from a biographical sketch published by Christie's, London