Anton Räderscheidt

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Anton Räderscheidt (October 11, 1892 – March 8, 1970) was a German painter who was a leading figure of the New Objectivity.

Räderscheidt was born in Cologne and studied at the Academy of Düsseldorf. He was severely wounded in the First World War, where he fought at Verdun. After the war he returned to Cologne, cofounding in 1919 the artists' group Stupid with other members of the local constructivist and dada scene. This was short-lived, as Räderscheidt was by 1920 abandoning constructivism for a magic realist style.

The works Räderscheidt produced in the 1920s develop the theme of the pair in a series of paintings of clothed men with nude women. The influence of metaphysical art is felt in the way the mannequin-like figures stand detached from their environment and from each other. His works from this era are rare, because most of his work was either seized by the Nazis as degenerate art and destroyed, or was destroyed in Allied bombing raids.

In 1934 he emigrated to Paris, where his work became more colorful, curvilinear and rhythmic. He was interned by the occupation authorities in 1940, but he escaped to Switzerland. In 1949 he returned to Cologne and resumed his work, producing many paintings of horses shortly before adopting an abstract style in 1957.

Räderscheidt was to return to the themes of his earlier work in some of his paintings of the 1960s. Suffering a stroke in 1967, he had to relearn the act of painting, and produced a penetrating series of self portraits in gouache before his death in 1970.

[edit] References

Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0
Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0728701847