Karl Walther

Karl Walther (August 19, 1905 in Zeitz – June 9, 1981 in Seeshaupt) was a painter of the German Post-Impressionist school, and an exponent of plein air painting.

Following a lithography apprenticeship, Walther studied music (1920) and then painting (1925) at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig with Heinz Dörffel and Fritz Ernst Rentsch.

Painting stays abroad led him to the Lake Lugano in 1930, to Paris in 1931, where he met Oskar Kokoschka, and to the Rembrandt-Exhibition in Amsterdam in 1932.

[3] Walther's art of that era was often inspired by a tristesse which reflected the reality of his objects in an impressionistic manner, but without any political coloration.

His talent in picturing the mood of cities and his success during the Great German Art Exhibition preserved Walther for a long time from conscription to the Wehrmacht: until mid-1944, after the completion of a number of paintings of Würzburg at the invitation of Prof. Heinrich Dikreiter (Founder of the Municipal Gallery of Würzburg), Walther was exempted from military service.

In 1940, Walther moved from Leipzig to Munich, and in 1943 to Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg (in 1942 he had to give up his studio in Berlin because of bomb attacks).

There he fell into British captivity, where he became friends with the Würzburg painter and graphic artist Josef Scheuplein in the POW camp of Rimini.

During this time, he painted several portraits of American military personnel and diplomats, including the Consul General in Munich, Sam E. Woods.

Together with Berlin painter friends, Walther travelled again to Venice in 1974, where he created a number of bright and vivid city images, and in 1976 to Berlin-Spandau.

In the spring of 1978, Walther suffered a stroke which forced him to give up painting, and he devoted his attention to music in his last years.

Walther's painting is influenced by French and German impressionists and his enthusiasm for Liebermann, Corinth and Slevogt, as well as for their predecessors, Velázquez and Constable.

Since I first ever took any lessons at an academy or private school, Corinth was my only textbook instructions for self-study of human, animal, landscape and architectural painting".

Walther can wrest these things a picturesque charm, he can raise profane objects to works of art without putting them on a symbolic level.

Walther was, as the Frenchman, deliberately undemanding in the choice of his sujets: His garden gave the flowers of spring, summer and autumn, as well as fruits and vegetables.

Unlike many of his predecessors, Walther did not paint in an idealized or timeless manner: he was committed to reality, as some wintry cloudy city views or images of destroyed Munich show.

Walther's enthusiasm for the outdoors motivated the artist to capture the play of light and color at any season and to reproduce its changing moods in his paintings.