Decadence - a "new and interesting and beautiful disease"

Schad (b.1894) entered the Munich Art Academy at the age of 17. His wealthy and influencial parents encouraged his pursuit of the artistic career all along. When WWI broke out, Schad fled to Switzerland to avoid military service.
With the financial help from his father, he could afford the most carefree lifestyle and traveled all over Europe. In Germany Schad was related to German Expressionism. In Zurich Schad entered the international circle of avant garde artists - the Dadaists of the Cabaret Voltaire, later he moved to Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
He returned to Germany and quickly left for Italy.

Those were turbulent times for Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic: 40 percent of the unemployed, 5 million dead, 2 million orphans, 1 million disabled, a million widows and unprecedented inflation, when the money, printed in the morning, lost its value by noon. Clubs for any sexual preferences appeared throughout Germany: for homosexuals, transvestites, lesbians.
In 1930, there were 30,000 lesbians in Berlin, by contrast with 5,000 in Paris. Cocaine use had become almost the norm. Since 1914 widows in the German cities were forced into prostitution to provide for their families. As a result, widow and prostitute were considered almost the same. In the Weimar Republic a widow's veil became an accessory of a prostitute.
Berlin turned into the capital of bohemian Europe, intoxicated by cocaine, great shifts of mores and the songs of Kurt Weill.
Later the artist said that in Italy he learned everything from studying the masterpieces of Da Vinci, Titian and Raphael. In Rome Schad met his first wife Marcella Arcangeli, a medical professor's daughter, their marriage lasted 4 years. The couple moved to Vienna in 1925.
He returned to Berlin in 1929 and the same year had his solo show there. After that brief and great period in his oeuvre during the late 1920s, Schad did nothing of significance, as he generally stopped painting in the middle of 1930s, and took a job as a picture restorer and teacher.
During WWII Schad lived in Germany, he did commissioned portraits for the German film industry.
In 1947 he married a young actress Bettina Mittelstädt.
His magnificent oeuvre, the hypnotic and intense portraits, represent a dramatic record of life in Berlin in 1920s.




(Dr. Haustein was a dermatologist with a specialist interest in syphilis who serviced the prostitutes on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. In the late 1920s his home became a fashionable salon where many of the distinguished artistic and literary figures of the time would meet. Schad described the unique atmosphere there as being one of 'extreme intellectual and erotic freedom [where] writers, artists, and politicians would mingle with a plethora of scientists, physicians and beautiful women'.)

Thanks for sharing. Did know about Schad.
ReplyDeleteAmazing artistry, isn't it?
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