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By
means of this website, the Christian Hess Cultural Association wishes to
make available to the larger public and to the world of art, the works
of a distinguished, albeit sadly forgotten, protagonist of the German
art scene between the wars. A painter and sculptor with a solid European
culture, Louis Christian Hess (Bolzano 1895 – Schwaz 1944) was
inspired by Expressionism, Cubism and the Italian Novecento
movement. An ante litteram Citizen of Europe, he travelled and
worked extensively, from Scandinavia to Sicily, always accompanied by
his ideals of freedom and peace, but the tragedy of Nazism was to stalk
him like a curse. In those terrible years his works were scattered far
and wide or, indeed, lost. Several of them were burnt during the fire
that destroyed the Glaspalast in Munich, together with the paintings of
an avantgarde art collective called Juryfreie (translatable as
Jury-free), of which he was the leading figure, and which was closed
down by Hitler because it was deemed to be inspired by Bolshevism.
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On the web to
escape being forgotten |
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Christian Hess, the German
painter and sculptor, in a photo dated 1939, when he was 44
years old, and one of his rare signatures. He died in Schwaz in
November 1944,
after an air raid over Innsbruck. His art – banned by the Nazis
and resurrected in the 1970s by the itinerant Exhibition of
Rediscovery – now lives again on the Web, in an attempt to
rescue it from the obscurity from which Germany has not yet
helped it to emerge |
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As a
result of this political ostracism and creeping prosecution, Hess
refrained from signing his works for fear of being discovered, and chose
to leave his country for exile in Sicily, where his sister Emma was
living at the time. Several years later, when the winds of war started
to blow across Italy as well, he entrusted his works to his sister Emma,
left Messina and sought refuge in Switzerland, or with relatives in Württemberg and Tyrol. The
difficulties and deprivations of war, however, undermined his health and
he moved from one sanatorium to another. The military police eventually
tracked him down and he was assigned to the civilian postal service,
from which he was later exempted when his health worsened. The Artists’
Union of Tyrol gave him a studio in Innsbruck. He died, aged 48,
in Schwaz after an air raid, only five months before the end of the war.
His
works are rediscovered
In the
1970s, on the initiative of several men of culture – among which the
eminent author Leonardo Sciascia – the Region of Sicily paid tribute to
Christian Hess by holding an exhibition of the rediscovered works of
this German artist, in partnership with the Goethe Institut and with the
sponsorship of the European Parliament, “to remember the artist who
loved Sicily and portrayed it in the many aspects of its landscape and
life, and restore him to the prominence he deserves”. After Palermo the
Exhibition travelled to Rome, Padua, Genoa, Trieste, Bolzano, Milan,
Florence, Turin, Innsbruck, Passau and Munich, being received everywhere
with acclaim from both critics and the public.
The
thought, life and work of this extraordinary artist, who died so
prematurely, now lives again on the Web, thanks to the Christian Hess
Cultural Association, which, in order to perpetuate his memory globally,
has created this website, which contains pictures and archive documents.
The aim is to attract the interest of scholars on this dark period in
the history of German art between the wars and to establish links with
universities, museums, institutions and collectionists to find other
lost and forgotten artworks, especially those he never signed, left by
Hess in the European countries where he was forced to work clandestinely
and thus complete the catalog of his works.
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