Ambiguity, light nudes and "something hysterical": Paintings by Franz von Stuck

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The paintings of Franz von Stuck fascinate and frighten, attract attention and at the same time repel - all thanks to how the artist accurately and naturalistically portrayed abstract, allegorical, myths and legends concepts. And also - thanks to the note of "hysteria" that Carl Gustav Jung himself caught in his works. And, of course, due to the fact that among the works of von Stuck, paintings with the image of the nude body prevail.

Franz Stuck, son of a miller, symbolist

In fact, the prefix "von" was added to Stuck's name only in 1906, when he received a title of nobility. And the artist was born in a simple family - his father was a Bavarian miller. In 1878, at the age of fifteen, a boy who had been drawn to drawing from an early age went to Munich to study painting.

Actually, Franz von Stuck did not receive an academic education - despite the fact that after the art school he entered the Munich Academy of Arts, the artist did not complete the full course and acquired many skills on his own. He was inspired by the work of the Symbolists, first of all - Arnold Becklin, a Swiss painter and graphic artist who depicted amazing fictional worlds on canvases. Another artist who influenced Stuck's background was Franz von Lenbach, with his realistic portraits. The combination of a naturalistic image and otherworldly, mystical overtones allowed the audience to amaze the audience with the effect of getting to know the works of von Stuck.

The ideas for the paintings came from a fantasy world and took the viewer into this world. There are many pieces and often depicted all sorts of demons, witches, sphinxes and other evil spirits, often the figures in his works appeared half-naked or completely stripped of clothes, which was new and scandalous in the era of Victorian values dominance in Europe. And this is not only the case - von Stuck's characters seem to live their own lives, their poses, facial expressions bear the imprint of ambiguity and anguish.

The figures in von Stuck's paintings usually remain immobile, but even in this immobility it seems that something mystical and ominous is hidden. Even simple at first glance plots, even portraits, came out from von Stuck full of allegories and ambiguity. This is how the reviving characters of the paintings described in classical literature seem to be realistic and at the same time infinitely far from the ordinary human world.

Scum and not only in the pictures background Stuck

What Franz Stuck created had nothing to do with academic painting, it was modern. The German artist, like all modernists, experimented with new artistic techniques and different genres.

In 1892, several artists, including Stuck, united and created the Munich Secession, the first in a series of similar associations throughout Germany. Members of the secession declared themselves opponents of conservative views on art, those views that were proclaimed and professed by the existing associations of artists. The idea was to try something new, fresh and bold in art. The following year, 1893, the first exhibition of the Secession was held, which was attended by about four thousand people to see the work of three hundred modernist artists, including Franz von Stuck.

Then a sensation was made by his work entitled "Sin". On canvas, the artist depicted an almost completely naked female figure, and, as it seems at first glance, it is covered by some kind of dark fabric. But no: after looking closely, the viewer realizes that this woman - Eve - has been wrapped in a snake, her head rests on the woman's shoulder, and her eyes are fixed directly on the one who stands in front of the picture. Subsequently, Stuck created eleven more versions of this work.

Apparently, one should not look for a deep philosophical meaning in the works of von Stuck - the artist did not investigate the issues of being and did not look for the meaning of life, he only demonstrated a mixture of external, physical beauty and internal, spiritual beauty. At the same time, the works of Nietzsche had a great influence on von Stuck's worldview, and in general the ideas of the end of the nineteenth century about the superman could not but influence the work of the Bavarian artist.

In 1895 he received the title of professor at the Academy of Arts, and in 1906 - a title of nobility, which allowed him to add a respectful "background" to his name.

If at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries von Stuck was extremely popular with connoisseurs of the modernist direction in painting, which is perfectly demonstrated by numerous repetitions of his own paintings, then closer to the First World War, and even more so after its end, the popularity of the German quickly faded away. The world has changed, von Stuck's pictures of the imaginary magical worlds no longer found the desired response in the hearts of the audience and often simply seemed out of place; the artist was going out of fashion. Interest in his work resumed already in the sixties, along with the return of the popularity of modernity.

Artist's villa

From what his contemporaries told about von Stuck, one gets the impression that he tried to turn life itself into a work of art. After painting the picture, von Stuck worked on the frame - which became an integral part of the picture and also a work of art.

And in 1898, the artist built a house in Munich called the Stuck Villa. It became, in a sense, a reflection of the artist's creative views: everything in the villa was arranged according to von Stuck's sketches. The main facade and interiors of the villa were decorated with numerous sculptures - the artist had a special love for them, it was not for nothing that his paintings, as a rule, were created on large canvases.

Von Stuck's furniture was created according to his own designs. In 1900 she was awarded the Gold Medal at the World Exhibition in Paris. Later, a studio was added to the main building, and after the death of von Stuck, in 1968, the villa received its first visitors as a museum.

Continuing the theme, a story about another magnificent symbolism - Arnold Böcklin, who inspired great minds to create masterpieces.