Indelible Marks (#7)
Conrad Felixmüller (1897-1977)
Conrad Felixmüller was born in Dresden and was an Expressionist painter and printmaker. He attended drawing classes at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts in 1911–12 before studying under Carl Bantzer at the Dresden Academy of Art. In 1917 he did military service as a medical orderly, and became a founding member of the Dresden Expressionist group. He achieved his earliest success as a printmaker. He published many woodcuts and drawings in left-wing magazines, and remained a prolific printmaker throughout his career.
A friend of the Isakowitz family, in 1932 he produced portraits of my mother and grandmother and in November 1934 a drawing of my grandfather. Erich Isakowitz, like many members of the educated middle class helped support the artist through his patronage.
Felixmuller, a committed communist was regarded as a ‘degenerate artists’. This term was used by the Nazis from 1933 onwards to describe almost all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German, Jewish or Communist in nature.
A touring exhibition of ‘degenerate art’ took place in Germany soon after Hitler's rise to power. Its first showing was in the courtyard of the City Hall in Dresden in September 1933 and included 40 works by Felixmüller.
Felixmüller moved to Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1934, hoping to escape persecution and work more freely. In 1937, 151 of his works were confiscated from public collections. In 1941 the artist's Berlin home was destroyed by bombs and he sought refuge in Damsdorf in the far north of Germany. In 1944 he moved back closer to Dresden, was called-up for military service and was taken prisoner by the Russians. After his release he returned to near Dresden and in 1949 was appointed professor at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle, where he taught drawing and painting at the faculty of education. After his retirement in 1961 Conrad Felixmüller returned to West Berlin and died in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf in 1977.
