Max Kaus, Ischia, 1961, Large Painting, Catalog Raisonné

Max Kaus

Berlin 1891 - 1977

Rocky coast of Ischia III, 1961

Oil on canvas

Signed lower left

Size: 108 x 123 cm

Frame: 112 x 127 cm

Catalog raisonné Kaus, Schmitt-Wischmann 447

good original condition



Authenticity is guaranteed in writing.



Max Kaus was born on March 11, 1891 in Berlin. After training as a painter, he attended the arts and crafts school in Berlin-Charlottenburg from 1908 onwards, while also working as a decorative painter. The young Kaus had his first contact with the art of the Italian Renaissance through the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The desire to establish himself as a freelance painter grew and he moved into his first studio in 1913. A travel grant to Paris enabled Kaus to visit the art metropolis in the spring of 1914; However, the outbreak of World War I forced him to return home early. Kaus volunteered and, as a paramedic in 1916, met artists Erich Heckel, Anton Kerschbaumer and Otto Herbig, among others. Inspired by Heckel - Kaus' role model both personally and artistically - he created lithographs and woodcuts. Orders for decorative paintings ensure their existence after the war. Kaus' real interest was in fine art and he soon had his first successes: in 1919, his first solo exhibition took place at the Ferdinand Möller Gallery. Kaus met Otto Mueller and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in 1920 in the Free Secession, of which Kaus now regularly exhibits. He joined the Berlin Secession and the Munich Expressionist Workshops the following year. The final third of the 1920s marked the end of his expressionist phase. In 1926, Kaus took on a teaching position for landscape painting, life and animal drawing at the Master School for Arts and Crafts in Berlin. In 1927, he received the Albrecht Dürer Prize from the city of Nuremberg, and two years later he was honored with the Villa Romana Prize. Travels within Germany, but also to Northern Italy and Austria, inspire the numerous landscape images that dominate his work from the 1930s. Having worked as a teacher of figurative painting at the United State Schools in Berlin since 1935, Kaus was increasingly exposed to the repression of the National Socialists: in 1937 his works were removed from museums and in 1938 he had to give up his teaching position. After World War II, Kaus returned to teaching at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. He has held a full professorship since 1949 and has held the position of deputy director since 1953. The artist's post-war oeuvre is essentially divided into four complexes: the North Sea and Rome pictures, the group of Veneziana impressions that begins at the beginning of the 1960s, and the portraits and still lifes of the last years of his work. Max Kaus - artistically part of the second generation of expressionists - died on August 5, 1977 in Berlin.