August F. Biehle, Jr. was an American Modernist painter.

Early life

Biehle was Born in Cleveland, the son of Christina (Mussler) and August F. Biehle, Sr. Biehle trained as an apprentice decorator with his father for the firm of Rorimer Brooks. He went to Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 in 1903 to study painting in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and at the Kunstgeverbeschule 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...

. Upon his return to Cleveland in 1905 Biehle went to work for the Sherwin Williams Company.

Later career

Biehle was a lithographer for Otis Lithography and Continental Lithography Corporation where he remained from 1913-52. Around 1919 he began painting with Henry Keller

Henry Keller

Henry George Keller was an American artist who led a generation of Ohio watercolor painters of the Cleveland School. Keller's students at the Cleveland School of Art and his Berlin Heights, Ohio summer school included Charles E. Burchfield, Paul Travis, and Frank N...

 at Berlin Heights, Ohio

Berlin Heights, Ohio

Berlin Heights is a village in Erie County, Ohio, United States. The population was 685 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Sandusky, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area....

, an artist's colony near Sandusky, Ohio

Sandusky, Ohio

Sandusky is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Erie County. It is located in northern Ohio and is situated on the shores of Lake Erie, almost exactly half-way between Toledo to the west and Cleveland to the east....

. Biehle contributed paintings of both urban and rural Ohio to the American Scene movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Biehle was a member of the Kokoon Arts Club

Kokoon Arts Club

The Kokoon Arts Club, sometimes spelled Kokoon Arts Klub, was a Bohemian artists group founded in 1911 by Carl Moellman and William Sommer to promote Modernism in Cleveland, Ohio. Moellman had been a member of New York City's Kit Kat Club, which served as inspiration for Kokoon...

 in Cleveland, Ohio, which was founded in 1911 by a group of young Cleveland artists including William Sommer

William Sommer

William Sommer was an American Modernist painter.William Sommer was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1867. He was largely self-taught, but received instruction early on from artist and commercial lithographer Julius Melchers...

, Carl Moellmann, Morris Grossman, Elmer Brubeck, and Harry Stebner.

He was married in 1921 to the former Mary Theresa Wessler.

Assessment

According to art historian William H. Robinson, “What is perhaps most surprising about modernism in northeast Ohio is the diversity of artists involved. The new art entered the region from many different sources, often bypassing the New York groups normally associated with early modernism in America. August Biehle (1885–1979), an artist almost completely forgotten today, played a pivotal role in this process. The son of a German immigrant painter, Biehle traveled abroad several times seeking artistic training, visiting Germany in 1903 and again in 1910. In 1912, after seeing the first exhibition of the Blue Rider group in Munich, he returned to Cleveland and showed his colleagues his copy of The Blue Rider Almanach containing prints by Kandinsky and discussions of avant-garde art, music, and aesthetic theory. Biehle’s own paintings, containing explosive distortions of form and color, established a link between Cleveland artists and the German Expressionists. Yet, like many artists in the region, Biehle worked throughout his long career in a variety of styles, moving with remarkable facility between modernist and more traditional methods of pictorial construction.”

The Canton Museum of Art

Canton Museum of Art

The Canton Museum of Art, founded in 1935, is a broad-based community arts organization designed to encourage and promote the fine arts in Canton, Ohio....

 Exhibition Archives describe August Biehle as one of northeast Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

's most prolific and distinguished artists, with masterful draftsmanship and a superior sense of design. He assimilated aspects of German Expressionism

German Expressionism

German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...

, Fauvism

Fauvism

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...

, and Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

, and moved skillfully between a range of styles, from Jugendstil (a German modernist style) to American Scene painting

American scene painting

American scene painting refers to a naturalist style of painting and other works of art of the 1920s through the 1950s in the United States. American scene painting is also known as Regionalism....

. He also displayed his versatility by mastering a variety of media and techniques, from graphite drawing to painting in oil

Oil painting

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

, gouache

Gouache

Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...

, pastel, and tempera

Tempera

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...

.

Exhibitions

His paintings have previously appeared in numerous exhibitions, including shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...

, the Butler Institute of American Art

Butler Institute of American Art

The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum has been operating pro bono since 1919...

 in Youngstown, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

in New York City.