History of Art: Richard Oelze

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Richard Oelze

Rudolf Dodenhoff
Portrait Richard Oelze
1948

Richard Oelze

(b Magdeburg, 29 June 1900; d Posteholz, nr Hameln, 27 May 1980).

German painter and draughtsman. He studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar under Johannes Itten (1921–5). His early work was influenced by Constructivism, but Oelze was soon impressed by Neue Sachlichkeit, with which he became familiar while living in Dresden (1926–9). At this time he also became acquainted with Otto Dix and his work. His pictures from the late 1920s, for example Still-life with White Plate and Coloured Balls (oil on panel, 1928–9; Berne, priv. col.), show a clear concreteness and strong composition and reflect the trance-like state found in works of Magic Realism. During this period he also visited the Bauhaus in Dessau for several months. On a trip to Ascona in 1929 he saw reproductions of the works of Max Ernst and Hans Arp for the first time. In 1933 he moved to Paris, where he remained until 1936 and made contact with the Surrealists. By the 1930s dreams and premonitions were becoming themes in his work, and his paintings increasingly featured dream-creatures, combinations of animal and plant, plant and human, human and animal. In the painting Daily Tribulations (1934; Düsseldorf, Kstsamml. Nordrhein–Westfalen) the fears and difficulties experienced by Oelze one year after the Nazis had taken power in Germany were given visual form. Morbid forms in a river dominate the picture and block, like a hedge, any view into depth. In the same year that it was painted this work was enthusiastically taken up by the Surrealists at an exhibition in the Porte de Versailles. In 1936 it was shown in New York at the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at MOMA. Expectation (1936; New York, MOMA), probably Oelze’s best-known work, conveys like no other picture of its time the mood in Europe in those years, in all its oppressiveness and apprehension. The clarity of the realism of the human figures is contrasted with the dark forms of vegetal growth; both dissolve in the cool and utterly alien coloration cast over them by the deep sky. The deep perspective of this picture is unusual in Oelze’s work.