OTTO NEUMANN (1895-1975)
Otto Neumann was a 20th century German Expressionist, born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1895. He began his artistic training at the Academie der Bildenden Kunst and studied with several noted German artists. In 1929, he married Hilde Rothschild, who became a major force in his artistic and personal life. It was she who persuaded him not to destroy work that he would later consider irrelevant, thus guaranteeing that his legacy would be extensive and complete.
Neumann’s artistic career went through a progressive series of changes. In his early years, he supported himself by painting portraits of the members of the academic community in which he lived. As he acquired greater financial freedom, due mostly to his wife’s wealth, he found this less inspiring. In the early 1920s, he abandoned oils and began using watercolors for their ability to express a greater sense of immediacy and looseness as needed for his imagination. At the end of the 1940s, he discontinued the use of watercolors in favor of various graphic media, primarily the monotype.
The monotype is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface, such as a copper plate, glass or plastic. The image is then transferred onto a sheet of paper by pressing the two together, usually with the assistance of a printing-press. Monotypes can also be created by inking an entire surface and using brushes or rags to remove ink to create a subtractive image.
In the 1950s, Neumann's obsession with the neoclassically rendered figure was reawakened and his monotypes featured modernized versions of Greek models. These also revealed the modernist influence of artists he admired, such as Picasso, Matisse, and Henry Moore. In the late 1960 and 1970s, and especially after the death of his wife, Neumann's trademark monotypes and hand-pulled woodblocks and linocuts became increasingly or totally abstract. Otto Neumann died in 1975, in Munich, Germany and, never having needed to sell art, the estate was virtually complete as it was transferred to nephews on his wife’s side that lived in the United States.
Museum and Gallery Exhibitions:
Museums and Cultural Centers Permanent Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Benedictine University, Lisle, Illinois
Burpee Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois
City of Dusseldorf Germany Permanent Art Collection
Darmstaedter Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois
Gahlberg Gallery, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina
Goethe Institute, Chicago, Illinois
Koehnline Museum of Art, Des Plaines, Illinois
Kurpfaelzisches Museum, Heidelberg, Germany Maier Museum of Art, Lynchberg, Virginia
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Oregon
Rosary College-River Forest, Illinois
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Southeast Missouri Regional Museum, Cape Girardeau, Missouri
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Germany
Stäatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Germany
Städtische Galerie, Munich, Germany
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida
Universitaetsbibliothek, Heidelberg, Germany
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
University of Illinois-Chicago, Illinios
University of Michigan Alumni Memorial Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia
Bibliography:
Press, Chicago, IL. ISBN-13:978-0-9789270-0-4
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