Menzel biography

The garden at the Palace of Prince Albert, the old gallery, Berlin, the German painter Adolf Menzel first introduced the scientific and realistic method into the historical genre, not always, however, consistently conducted by the artist. In the year, the artist undertook enormous work on the illustration of Friedrich the Great Friedrich, F. Kugler, creating four hundred drawings with a pen for engraving on a tree, laconic and sharp.

This work put it among the most famous German schedules of that time. In the illustrations of the Menzel, the reliability in the outline of the historical situation, costumes, and the ability to capture characteristic are especially attracted. And yet Menzel, both the artist and historian, did not escape the devil’s idealization and, above all, in the characterization of Frederick himself, appearing in the form of a fair enlightened monarch.

The same approach to the solution of the image of Frederick discovers Menzel in painting. The most interesting picture of the time of Frederick II-“Round table in San Sushi” has not been preserved, draws an exquisite society surrounding the emperor in his residence. Among those present are the famous French philosopher Voltaire. But neither an expertly written, precisely reproduced atmosphere of the palace, nor the accuracy of portrait similarity of the characters hide the features of idealization and description in the manner of execution.

The patrol is detained by the Polish family, the George Schepher Foundation, Schweinfurt, traveling to France and getting to know the achievements of French art strengthen the realistic orientation of the work of Menzel and his acute interest in modernity in various manifestations.

The artist’s art is reflected in the event of the revolution of the year. Menzel writes “Honor to those who died on March days”, Hamburg, Kunsthalla, discovering his democratic moods, sympathy for the victims of the uprising. The artist creates the painting “Iron -Supply Plant”, Berlin, the National Gallery, one of the first in Western European painting of paintings by the life of the working class, industrial labor.

With documentary accuracy, the artist is depicted by the huge workshop of the plant, machines and the flame of the furnace of workers, exhausted by overwhelming hard work. Immediately in the workshop, having perched behind a sheet of iron, they end up their meager breakfast. Some blackness and fragmentation of painting do not reduce the enormous meaning of this work showing the collective work of workers, a kind of power and beauty of cars.

Numerous preparatory drawings for the picture made from nature characterize the Menzel as one of the largest, since the time of Dürer, the drawers of Germany, and one of the leaders of romantic German historicism. Among these drawings there are both thorough sketches of costumes, the situation, and live sketches with a pencil, pen of M -brush. The art of Menzel received recognition far beyond Germany.

The largest Russian democrat critic V. Stasov called him "one of the greatest artists." However, the work of the Menzel has the limitations features: passive contemplation and overload of the details of its historical paintings, behind which the main thing is sometimes baked, as well as the glorification of the reactionary force of the Hohenzoller Prussia, nominated among the conglomerate of German states.

After the victory over France in the war - years and the formation of the German Empire with the dominance of the Junker and the large bourgeoisie in the country, large construction work is launched. The official art, glorifying the monarchy, is following the path of an increasing departure from reality to the world of fiction. Defenders of realistic art are forced to work in difficult conditions for a growing reaction.