Hans Moller (painter)

Last updated
Hans Moller
Born(1905-03-05)March 5, 1905
DiedOctober 19, 2000(2000-10-19) (aged 95)
Alma mater Berlin University of the Arts
Known for Painting
Movement Abstract art
Spouse
Helen Rosenblum
(m. 1933)

Hans Moller (b. Wuppertal, Germany 1905 - d. October 19, 2000 in Allentown, Pennsylvania) was a German-born American artist who worked mostly in an abstract format and is primarily considered to have been a colorist.

Contents

Biography

From 1919 until 1927, Moller was an instructor at the Kunstgewerbeschule Wuppertal-Barmen, an arts and crafts learning institution in the town in which he resided and also earned money as a bricklayer. Next he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.

In 1936, he emigrated to the United States from Germany to protect his Jewish wife (whom he had married in 1933), Helen Rosenblum from the Nazis. Once settled in the U.S. he went to work for the advertising firm Lord and Thomas as a graphic designer and works of his from that endeavor were exhibited at MOMA as part of a group exhibition in 1949. [1] The first solo exhibition of his paintings was held in 1942 at the Bonestell Gallery in New York City. In the following twenty years or so he had some twenty five solo exhibitions at various galleries. Moller created paintings in a multiplicity of styles, including; expressionism, abstractionism, surrealism, cubism, pointillism, and fauvism. Later he was represented for a stretch ending in 1995 by the Midtown-Payson Gallery in New York City. Therein in 1995 the Dusseldorf gallerist Torsten Bröhan put together an exhibition of Moller's work; it was the first solo exhibition of Moller's work in Germany.

Moller was known foremost as a colorist and once stated...“I only want to wake up every day and decide what colors to paint my sky.”. [2]

Ad Reinhardt included Moller in his 1946 work "How to Look at Modern Art in America". [3] [4]

Personal life

Moller and his wife were long time residents of Allentown. His wife Helen predeceased him in 1997. Hans Moller died in 2000. [5] [6]

Legacy

Following Moller's death a retrospective of the painter's work was mounted at the Lore Degenstein Gallery at Susquehanna University with an accompanying catalogue published by the Penn State University Press. The exhibition then traveled around Pennsylvania from 2001 until 2002 and then to the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Maine. Moller's works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, [7] the Brooklyn Museum of Art, [8] the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Allentown Art Museum.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ad Reinhardt</span> American painter and printmaker

Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement centered on the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as abstract expressionism. He was also a member of The Club, the meeting place for the New York School abstract expressionist artists during the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a major influence on conceptual art, minimal art and monochrome painting. Most famous for his "black" or "ultimate" paintings, he claimed to be painting the "last paintings" that anyone can paint. He believed in a philosophy of art he called Art-as-Art and used his writing and satirical cartoons to advocate for abstract art and against what he described as "the disreputable practices of artists-as-artists".

Hans Haacke is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert De Niro Sr.</span> American expressionist painter (1922–1993)

Robert Henry De Niro, better known as Robert De Niro Sr., was an American abstract expressionist painter and the father of actor Robert De Niro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Hofmann</span> German-American painter (1880–1966)

Hans Hofmann was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstract Expressionism. Born and educated near Munich, he was active in the early twentieth-century European avant-garde and brought a deep understanding and synthesis of Symbolism, Neo-impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism when he emigrated to the United States in 1932. Hofmann's painting is characterized by its rigorous concern with pictorial structure and unity, spatial illusionism, and use of bold color for expressive means. The influential critic Clement Greenberg considered Hofmann's first New York solo show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century in 1944 as a breakthrough in painterly versus geometric abstraction that heralded abstract expressionism. In the decade that followed, Hofmann's recognition grew through numerous exhibitions, notably at the Kootz Gallery, culminating in major retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1957) and Museum of Modern Art (1963), which traveled to venues throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. His works are in the permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, National Gallery of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago.

Wolf Kahn was a German-born American painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenny Scharf</span> American artist

Kenny Scharf is an American painter known for his participation in New York City's interdisciplinary East Village art scene during the 1980s, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Scharf's do-it-yourself practice spanned painting, sculpture, fashion, video, performance art, and street art. Growing up in post-World War II Southern California, Scharf was fascinated by television and the futuristic promise of modern design. His works often includes pop culture icons, such as the Flintstones and the Jetsons, or caricatures of middle-class Americans in an apocalyptic science fiction setting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronnie Landfield</span> American painter

Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.

Lawrence "Larry" Zox was an American painter and printmaker who is classified as an Abstract expressionist, Color Field painter and a Lyrical Abstractionist, although he did not readily use those categories for his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knox Martin</span> American painter, sculptor, and muralist (1923–2022)

Knox Martin was an American painter, sculptor, and muralist.

Dorothea Rockburne DFA is an abstract painter, drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Her work is geometric and abstract, seemingly simple but very precise to reflect the mathematical concepts she strives to concretize. "I wanted very much to see the equations I was studying, so I started making them in my studio," she has said. "I was visually solving equations." Rockburne's attraction to Mannerism has also influenced her work.

Joan Snyder is an American painter from New York. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow (1974).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Gwathmey</span> American artist

Robert Gwathmey was an American social realist painter. His wife was photographer Rosalie Gwathmey(September 15, 1908 – February 12, 2001) and his son was architect Charles Gwathmey.

Sanford Biggers is a Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist who works in film/video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance. An L.A. native, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1999.

George Earl Ortman was an American painter, printmaker, constructionist and sculptor. His work has been referred to as Neo-Dada, pop art, minimalism and hard-edge painting. His constructions, built with a variety of materials and objects, deal with the exploration off visual language derived from geometry—geometry as symbol and sign.

Peter Grippe was an American sculptor, printmaker, and painter. As a sculptor, he worked in bronze, terracotta, wire, plaster, and found objects. His "Monument to Hiroshima" series (1963) used found objects cast in bronze sculptures to evoke the chaotic humanity of the Japanese city after its incineration by atomic bomb. Other Grippe Surrealist sculptural works address less warlike themes, including that of city life. However, his expertise extended beyond sculpture to ink drawings, watercolor painting, and printmaking (intaglio). He joined and later directed Atelier 17, the intaglio studio founded in London and moved to New York at the beginning of World War II by its founder, Stanley William Hayter. Today, Grippe's 21 Etchings and Poems, a part of the permanent collection at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, is available as part of the museum's virtual collection.

Michael Kessler is an American artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Knaths</span> American painter

Karl Knaths was an American artist whose personal approach to the Cubist aesthetic led him to create paintings which, while abstract, contained readily identifiable subjects. In addition to the Cubist painters, his work shows influence by Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Paul Klee, Stuart Davis, and Agnes Weinrich. It is nonetheless, in use of heavy line, rendering of depth, disciplined treatment of color, and architecture of planes, distinctly his own.

John Millard Ferren was an American artist and educator. He was active from 1920 until 1970 in San Francisco, Paris and New York City.

Mary Weatherford is a Los Angeles-based painter. She is known for her large paintings incorporating neon lighting tubes. Her work is featured in museums and galleries including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the High Museum of Art. Weatherford's solo exhibitions include Mary Weatherford: From the Mountain to the Sea at Claremont McKenna College, I've Seen Gray Whales Go By at Gagosian West, and Like The Land Loves the Sea at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ming Smith</span> African-American photographer

Ming Smith is an American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

References

  1. "Hans Moller - MoMA". Moma.org. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
  2. "Hans Moller: Purveyor of Color, 1905–2000 By Valerie Livingston". Psupress.org. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
  3. "Get a feel for the many faces of Hans Moller at Baum exhibit".
  4. Cembalest, Robin (13 November 2013). "The Semi-Secret History of Modernism's Best Comic Artist".
  5. "Internationally Known Painter Hans Moller Dies The Colorful Artist Spent His Last 30 Years In Allentown". Articles.mcall.com. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
  6. "Hans Moller - Biography - People - Collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum". Collection.cooperhewitt.org. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
  7. "Hans Moller". whitney.org. The Whitney Museum.
  8. "Brooklyn Museum". www.brooklynmuseum.org.