Max Peiffer-watenphul Biography
Max Peiffer Watenphul (1896 - 1976) was a painter of German origin. At the age of seventeen he began teaching himself to paint. After completing his doctorate in canon law and a lawyer at the Hattingen district court in 1919, at the age of 23, he decided to take the path of a painter and abandon jurisprudence. The imagery of these first creative years is simple, almost banal. Shows the painter's surroundings. One feels reminded of the New Objectivity. The large-scale image structure, the strong colors and the deliberately naive realization of the subjects are reminiscent of Matisse and Rousseau. In the autumn of 1919 he began studying at the State Bauhaus in Weimar. Follows the preparatory course with Itten. With Gropius' permission, he is allowed to participate in all seminars. During this formative period in Weimar, which lasts until the summer of 1922, he is acquainted with Klee, Feininger, Kandinsky and Albers and close friends with Schwitters, Schlemmer, Marcks, Lasker-Schüler, Gilles et al. In 1921 the Folkwang Museum Essen exhibited his first museum exhibition and Flechtheim his first solo gallery exhibition. Max Peiffer Watenphul is in his mid-twenties. Most of the paintings and watercolors shown here date from his time at the Bauhaus and subsequent work sojourns in Salzburg, Vienna, Rome, Düsseldorf and his hometown of Hattingen. In the summer of 1924, Peiffer Watenphul traveled to Mexico for more than six months. The folk art of Mexico inspires him and cities and landscapes stimulate him to create a new visual language. Peiffer Watenphul has been a traveler all his life, both from an internal impulse and from the turmoil of war. In particular, the light of Italy and the Mediterranean landscape are supposed to be his most important inspirations (he finally lived here from 1946 until his death in 1976). But his work remains independent and refuses to be categorized. Rather, he constantly connects his internal imagery with what surrounds him.
