Willy Spatz

He developed his talent as a lithographer as a member of the "St. Lukas Club", founded by Olof Jernberg, Heinrich Hermanns, Helmuth Liesegang, August Deusser, Otto Heichert, Gustav Wendling and Arthur Kampf, who had married his youngest sister Mathilde Spatz (1869-1950) in 1889.

Both in colouristic and in terms of the way of depicting religious motifs in a contemporary and genre-like manner, which was peculiar to Munich art, this period was of great importance for his artistic development.

His work shows the effective light treatment of Parisian salon painting [de], atmospheric design devices of Art Nouveau and a stark, partly caricaturistic realism of the Old Masters.

Other works of this kind include five murals, a seeing Justitia and four historical scenes from German court life in the large plenary hall of the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf [de] from 1913.

The painting Gang der Hirten zur Heiligen Familie from 1892, damaged during the war, has now been extensively restored and is in the Museum Kunstpalast.

Schaarschmidt recognised a difference from the religious painting of the late Nazarenes and Eduard von Gebhardt, particularly in the "unrealistic" use of colour, which he attributed to the artistic intention of evoking psychological effects and moods.

[12] After his death in 1931 at the age of 59, a memorial exhibition was held in his and Wilhelm Degode's honour at the Alte Kunsthalle in early 1932.