Adolf Hölzel was a German artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

/painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

. His style developed from Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 to expressive modernism

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

.

Biography

He was born in Olomouc

Olomouc

Olomouc is a city in Moravia, in the east of the Czech Republic. The city is located on the Morava river and is the ecclesiastical metropolis and historical capital city of Moravia. Nowadays, it is an administrative centre of the Olomouc Region and sixth largest city in the Czech Republic...

 in Moravia

Moravia

Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...

, the son of the publisher Eduard Hölzel. In 1871 his family moved to Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, and from 1872 he studied painting at the Vienna Academy. He continued his studies in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 at the Kunstakademie beginning in 1876. There he became acquainted with the painter Fritz von Uhde

Fritz von Uhde

Fritz von Uhde was a German painter of genre and religious subjects. His style lay between Realism and Impressionism.- Biography :...

 and painted in a style influenced by Impressionism.

From 1888 to 1905 he worked in Dachau

Dachau

Dachau is a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria, about 20 km north-west of Munich. It is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich with roughly 40,000 inhabitants...

, where there was an artists' colony. Already during his time in Dachau his work began moving toward abstraction, reflecting his interest in such principles as the golden section and Goethe's

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

 Theory of Colors

Theory of Colours

Theory of Colours is a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by man, published in 1810...

. He taught at the Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

 Academy, and painted—four years before Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

—an abstract painting (Composition in Red, 1905). Among his students the so-called "Hölzel circle" developed, including Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture...

, Willi Baumeister

Willi Baumeister

Willi Baumeister was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer.-Life:Willi Baumeister, born in Stuttgart in 1889, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his native city from 1905 to 1907, followed by military service...

, Max Ackermann

Max Ackermann

Max Ackermann was a German painter and graphic artist of abstract works and representational art.- Life and work :Born in Berlin on 5 October 1887, Ackermann started carving wooden figures and modelling ornaments in his father's studio at an early age...

 and Johannes Itten

Johannes Itten

Johannes Itten was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus school...

. In 1919 Adolf Hölzel left the Stuttgart Academy and went into retirement. He died in Stuttgart in 1934.

Publications

• Adolf Hölzel. Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen. Exhib. March 21 - May 3, 1987.
• Wolfgang Venzmer: Adolf Hölzel. Leben und Werk. Stuttgart 1982.