Heinrich Campendonk
Waldlandschaft mit rotem Segelschiff, 1917

Alfred Flechtheim and Heinrich Campendonk

Heinrich Campendonk was born on 3 November, 1889 in Krefeld. In 1904 he attended the Krefeld textile academy, switching to the art school in 1905 where he was taught by Jan Thorn-Prikker until 1909. From 1911 onwards the collector Alfred Flechtheim became the artist’s benefactor. He bought Campendonk’s drawings and paid for his trip to Sindelfingen in Upper Bavaria where he joined the Blauer Reiter (Blue Rider) group of artists. From 1914 onwards he was represented in group exhibitions at the Galerie Alfred Flechtheim. He lived in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg from 1916 until he was drafted into the army. In 1920 Campendonk travelled to Italy and Flechtheim held a solo exhibition of his work. In 1923 the artist returned to Krefeld, was professor at the Kunstgewerbeschule (school of arts and crafts) in Essen and was called to the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in 1926.

When the National Socialists seized power Campendonk was dismissed from his post. However he was subsequently appointed professor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 1935. He was discredited in the inflammatory article ‘Säuberung des Kunsttempels’ (Purging the Temple of Art) in 1937 and his works were shown at the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition. In 1944 Campendonk hid from the German occupation forces and continued teaching after the war. The artist died on 9 May, 1957 in Amsterdam.

Campendonk, who experimented with the styles of various art movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Orphism, is considered a Geman Expressionist painter. In his works, that include reverse glass paintings, the artist created an ideal world in which man, animals and nature live in harmony with one another. Campendonk concentrated on public commissions that he received after starting to teach in the 1920s and, with increasing intensity, up until World War II. He also designed monumental paintings on glass among other works. Towards the end of his life he focussed primarily on watercolours and drawings.