Josef Scharl

Josef Scharl - First successes in the Weimar Republic

Josef Scharl was born in Munich on 9th December 1896. He came from a large family and was the second of fourteen children, whose father initially worked as a baker and later in an antiques shop. From 1910, Josef Scharl attended the Munich School of Painting, where he trained as a decorative painter for three and a half years, gained experience in the restoration of paintings, and took evening classes in nude painting. In 1918, Scharl was seriously wounded in the First World War, suffered temporary paralysis of his right arm and was hospitalised several times. That same year, he began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Angelo Jank and Heinrich von Zügel, but left prematurely and continued his education as a self-taught artist. The 1920s brought the artist personal happiness and professional success: his marriage to Magdalena Gruber was followed by the birth of their son Alois and his paintings attracted the interest of an art-loving public. Scharl became a member of the Munich Secession, took part in its exhibitions and joined the German Artists' Association.

Banned from painting in Germany; emigration to the USA

The Rome Prize of the Prussian Academy of Arts enabled Josef Scharl to travel to Rome and Paris, where he came into contact with Late Impressionism. Initially, he was still clearly orientated towards Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, but increasingly found his way to a direct representation that dispensed with all decorative embellishment. The influence of Pablo Picasso, whom Scharl greatly admired, became more and more noticeable. The growing power of the National Socialists, however, had an extremely negative impact on Scharl: His sales fell drastically, which even his first solo exhibition at the Neumann-Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin could not change, and a ban on painting deprived him of his livelihood. An invitation from the Museum of Modern Art, which wanted to exhibit him together with Karl Hofer, Erich Heckel, Max Beckmann and Georg Scholz, strengthened his resolve to leave Germany and emigrate to America. Without his family, Josef Scharl finally arrived in the USA via Switzerland in 1938, and in the first few years there, Albert Einstein, whom he had met in Berlin, helped him find his way.

New environment; a change in painting style

Thanks to the financial support and great contacts of Albert Einsein, Josef Scharl was able to realise several exhibition projects in the USA between 1944 and 1946. Emigration had not only changed the artist's personal environment, but also his painting style, and his depictions showed stronger colours and clear lines. In 1945, Karl Nierendorf published the first US monograph on Scharl and exhibited his drawings of biblical motifs in his New York gallery. Wolfgang Sauerländer, with whom Scharl was also on friendly terms, arranged for him to illustrate an edition of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales for the publisher Pantheon Books. Further commissions followed, but the death of his patron Nierendorf and concern for his family who had remained behind in Germany, as well as a stomach ailment, weighed heavily on the artist. He was granted American citizenship in 1952, the same year he took part in a group exhibition at the Galerie Georges Moos in Geneva.

Josef Scharl died from a heart attack in New York on 6th December 1954.