Hilmar Friedrich Wilhelm Bleyl, known as Fritz Bleyl, (8 October 1880, Zwickau

Zwickau

Zwickau in Germany, former seat of the government of the south-western region of the Free State of Saxony, belongs to an industrial and economical core region. Nowadays it is the capital city of the district of Zwickau...

, Kingdom of Saxony

Kingdom of Saxony

The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...

 – 19 August 1966, Bad Iburg

Bad Iburg

Bad Iburg is a town in the district of Osnabrück, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Teutoburg Forest, 16 km south of Osnabrück....

) was a German artist of the Expressionist

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 school, and one of the four founders of artist group Die Brücke

Die Brücke

Die Brücke was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller...

 ("The Bridge"). He designed graphics for the group including, for their first show, a poster, which was banned by the police. He left the group after only two years, when he married, to look after his family, and did not exhibit publicly thereafter.

Life and work

Fritz Bleyl was born in Zwickau

Zwickau

Zwickau in Germany, former seat of the government of the south-western region of the Free State of Saxony, belongs to an industrial and economical core region. Nowadays it is the capital city of the district of Zwickau...

 and grew up in the Erzgebirge region. In 1901 he began studying architecture at the Königliche
Technische Hochschule (technical university) of Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, as his parents wished; however, his own desire was to become a painter. The institution provided a wide range of studies in addition to architecture, such as freehand drawing, perspective drawing and the historical study of art.

Bleyl became close friends with fellow student, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...

, whom he met during the first term. They discussed art together and also studied nature, having a radical outlook in common.

In 1905, Bleyl along with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...

, and two other architecture students, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke.-Life and work:...

 and Erich Heckel

Erich Heckel

Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the Die Brücke group which existed 1905-1913.-Biography:Heckel was born in Döbeln . His parents were born in Saxony...

, founded the artists group Die Brücke

Die Brücke

Die Brücke was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller...

 ("The Bridge"). The group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the name) between the past and the present. They responded both to past artists such as Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...

 and
Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...

, as well as contemporary international avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 movements. Their group was one of the seminal ones, which in due course had a major impact on the evolution of modern art

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...

 in the 20th century and created the style of Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

. At this time, Bleyl was a keen member of the group. This met initially in Kirchner's first studio, which had previously been a butcher's shop. Bleyl described it as:

that of a real bohemian, full of paintings lying all over the place, drawings, books and artist’s materials — much more like an artist’s romantic lodgings than the home of a well-organised architecture student.

Kirchner's studio lived up to Bleyl's description, becoming a venue which overthrew social conventions to allow casual love-making and frequent nudity. Group life-drawing sessions took place using models from the social circle, rather than professionals, and choosing quarter-hour poses to encourage spontaneity. Bleyl described one such model, Isabella, a fifteen-year-old girl from the neighbourhood, as "a very lively, beautifully built, joyous individual, without any deformation caused by the silly fashion of the corset and completely suitable to our artistic demands, especially in the blossoming condition of her girlish buds."

The group composed a manifesto (mostly Kirchner's work), which was carved on wood and asserted a new generation, "who want freedom in our work and in our lives, independence from older, established forces."

As part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older media, particularly woodcut prints

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

. Bleyl specialised in graphic design and created several significant posters and tickets presenting the group to the general public.

In September and October 1906, the first group exhibition was held, focused on the female nude, in the showroom of K.F.M. Seifert and Co. in Dresden. Deriving from the life studies, Bleyl created a lithographic

Lithography

Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

 poster for the show printed in orange ink on white paper. It has a narrow, portrait format

Page orientation

Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape...

, more akin to Japanese woodcuts

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

 than conventional contemporary prints, and was a distinct contrast to the poster designed by Otto Gussmann for the Third German Exhibition of Applied Arts, which had opened four months previously in Dresden. Bleyl omits iconography such as a crown, a lamp and a flowing gown, to show a bold nude of the model Isabella full-length above the lettering. Police censors barred the display of the poster under Paragraph 184, the National Penal Code pornography clause, after perceiving pubic hair

Pubic hair

Pubic hair is hair in the frontal genital area, the crotch, and sometimes at the top of the inside of the legs; these areas form the pubic region....

 in the shadow underneath the stomach.

In 1905, Bleyl completed his university studies and, the following year, began to teach at the Bauschule (school of architecture) in Freiberg

Freiberg, Saxony

Freiberg is a city in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, administrative center of the Mittelsachsen district.-History:The city was founded in 1186, and has been a center of the mining industry in the Ore Mountains for centuries...

, Saxony

Saxony

The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

. He chose a bourgeois lifestyle, marrying in 1907 and, with a concern to support his family, left the group. He was replaced by Max Pechstein

Max Pechstein

Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...

 and Otto Mueller

Otto Mueller

Otto Mueller or Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.-Life and work:...

.

In 1916, he completed his dissertation, and travelled in Italy and through the Alps

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

. For the rest of his life, he continued to teach and to practise as an architect. He also continued with graphic work, but kept out of public gaze and did not have exhibitions. He resided in Rostock

Rostock

Rostock -Early history:In the 11th century Polabian Slavs founded a settlement at the Warnow river called Roztoc ; the name Rostock is derived from that designation. The Danish king Valdemar I set the town aflame in 1161.Afterwards the place was settled by German traders...

, Neukölln

Neukölln

Neukölln is the eighth borough of Berlin, located in the southeastern part of the city and was part of the former American sector under the Four-Power occupation of the city...

 in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, and Brandenburg

Brandenburg

Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...

.

Exhibitions

Fritz Bleyl exhibited in the following Die Brücke shows. Die Brücke organised touring exhibitions, where the same work would be shown again in a different venue.

• I Print Collection, Kunsthalle Beyer & Sohn gallery, Leipzig , November 1905
• July 1906, August Dörbant Art Salon, Braunschweig
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, Georg Hulbe Kunstgewerbehaus, Hamburg, September 1906
• Seifert Lamp Factory, Dresden-Löbtau, 24 September – end October 1906
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, Katharinenhof gallery, Frankfurt am Main, November 1906
• II Print Collection 1906–19076, Städtische Vorbildersammlung, Chemnitz, December 190
• Seifert Lamp Factory, Dresden-Löbtau, 3 December – end January 1907
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, Friedrich Cohen Art Salon, Bonn, February 1907
• II Print Collection 1906–1907, Zwickau Kunstverein, Zwickau, January – February 1907
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, Wilhelm Werner Art Salon, Göttingen, March – April 1907
• II Print Collection 1906–1907, Otto Fischer Art Salon, Bielefeld, March 1905
• II Print Collection 1906–1907, Düsseldorf Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, April 1907
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren, June 1907
• II Print Collection 1906–1907, Heidelberg Kunstverein, Heidelberg, June 1907
• II Painting and Print Exhibition, Flensburg Gewerbemuseum, Flensburg, June 1907
• II Print Collection 1906–1907, Würrtemberg Kunstverein, Stuttgart, July 1907
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, Pfälzischer Kunstverein, Speyer, August 1907
• II Painting and Print Exhibition, Clematis Art Salon, Hamburg, July – August 1907
• II Painting and Print Exhibition, Emil Richter Art Salon, Dresden, September 1907
• I Print Collection 1906–1907, XV Kunstverein Exhibition, Rosenheim, October 1907
• II Painting and Print Exhibition, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Magdeburg, October 1907