Georg Schrimpf

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Georg Schrimpf (born February 13, 1889 in Munich/Bavaria, died April 19, 1938 in Berlin), a German painter and graphic artist, was listed as a degenerate artist by the German National Socialist government in the 1930s.

Along with Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, Schrimpf is broadly acknowledged as a main representative of the art trend Neue Sachlichkeit (usually translated New Objectivity or Magic Realism), which developed in the 1920s as a unique and new body of art. Some writers consider it to be a counter-movement to Expressionism and Abstraction, but the choice of subject material prevented it from becoming reactionary. So one expert called it "New realism bearing a socialist flavor".

Schrimpf was an autodidact. He visited an art school just for eight days. From childhood on drawing and painting and copying works of the great masters obsessed him. His father didn’t see the artistic talent of his son and urged him to learn bakery. 1905 Georg started for many years a restless wandering through Belgium, France, Switzerland and Northern Italy. He worked as a waiter, baker, and coal shuffler. From 1913 his companion and life long friend became Oskar Maria Graf, also a learned baker, but later a famous novelist, who left Germany 1933 and required, the Nazis should burn his books like the books of so many other famous German writers. 1915 Schrimpf went to Berlin. He worked in a chocolate factory. In his free time he used every minute for drawing, painting, and wood carving.

1916 the famous publicist and art expert Herwarth Walden exhibited some paintings and woodcarvings of Schrimpf in his gallery “Sturm”. They got much attention. At this time and in this gallery Schrimpf met his later wife, Maria Uhden, also a painter. She died 1918.

1933 Schrimpf became professor at an art academy in Berlin, but was fired 1937 because of his “red past”. He had been a short time member of “Rote Hilfe”, a socialist organization. For the same reason the Nazi banned his works from public exhibitions.

1995 Deutsche Bundespost honored Schrimpf with a special stamp issue, based on his “Still life with cat” from 1923, here an enlarged reproduction.