Art of the 20th Century
Lovis
Corinth
Lovis Corinth
(b Tapiau, East Prussia, 21 July 1858; d Zandvoort, Netherlands, 17 July 1925).
German painter and writer. He grew up on his family’s farm and tannery. As a child he showed interest in art, taking informal lessons in drawing from a local carpenter and caricaturing his primary school teachers. Corinth’s father sent him to secondary school in the nearby city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), where he lived with his widowed aunt. A superstitious woman fond of story-telling, she possessed what Corinth later described as a coarse temperament and an unrestrained, ‘demonic’ humour. These qualities and his aunt’s bohemian acquaintances, including fortune-tellers and soothsayers, fascinated the young Corinth, accustomed to his more reserved parents. In this environment Corinth began to develop the rich imagination and love of anecdote that came to play such an important role in the evolution of his art.
