Max Klinger

Painter and printmaker (1857 - 1920)

Painter, sculptor and graphic designer, was born in Leipzig on 18 February 1857 and died in Grossjena, near Naumburg, on 5 July 1920. After attending the starter school and the technical school in Leipzig, he moved to Karlsruhe in 1874.
Between 1875 and 1879 he devoted himself to engravings, which he published in the following decade. The graphic activity includes etchings, burins and lithographs, distributed in cycles that he calls "Opus", like musicians and poets.
In 1882 he completed the decoration of the Albers villa in Stegliz near Berlin, his first important work of pictorial and decorative character.
In 1883-86 he lived in Paris, where he executed large-scale paintings and began his activity as a sculptor. In 1888 he moved with Karl Stauffer-Bern to Rome, where he lived until 1893, working intensely fascinated by nature and classical art. He returned to Leipzig where he lived almost the rest of his life, except for trips to Italy, Greece, France and Spain, often made for the purchase of marble.
In 1895 he published the programmatic book "Malerei und Zeichnung" ("Painting and drawing"). In 1898 he performed "Cristo in Olimpo", in which plastic and painting are united. In 1902 he completed the monument to "Beethoven" in Leipzig which gave him the notoriety and which represents his maximum plastic expression.
Klinger's visionary art has been linked to that of Arnold Böcklin and has had a profound influence on De Chirico.