Loading...Biography
August Macke was a famous German Expressionist painter.
August was born in 1887.[1] He was the only son of August Friedrich Hermann Macke (3 Mar 1845 - 28 Oct 1904), a civil engineer and building contractor (and amateur artist), and his wife (married on 17 Oct 1872 in Meschede), Maria Florentine, née Adolph.[2] Shortly after August's birth, the family settled at Cologne, where Macke was educated at the Kreuzgymnasium (1897-1900). In 1900, when he was thirteen, the family moved to Bonn, where Macke studied at the Realgymnasium and became a friend of Walter Gerhardt and Walter's sister, Elisabeth, whom he later married.[3]
August attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf from 1906 to 1908, but was far more stimulated by several trips to Paris, where he absorbed the works of the Impressionists, Fauvists and Cubists.
On 5 October 1909, he married Elisabeth Gerhardt in Bonn. After their honeymoon they moved to Tegernsee. They moved back to Bonn in November 1910. The couple had two sons:[2][4]
- Walter Carl August (born 13 Apr 1910, died 10 Mar 1927 of scarlet fever),
- Wolfgang (born 8 Feb 1913, died 14 April 1975),[5] married Gisela Viktoria Hedwig Karla Thuar.
Together with Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, August Macke co-founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911, a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it. In 1913 Macke was prominently featured in the First German Fall Salon in Berlin, the largest exhibition of European avant-garde art ever held in Germany up to that time. In 1914 he visited Tunisia with Klee and produced a series of brilliant watercolors that marked the emergence of his artistic maturity - one that would be tragically short-lived. Conscripted into the German Army at the start of World War I, he was sent to the Champagne front and was almost immediately killed in action[6][7] near Perthes-lès-Hurlus. He was buried at the German War Cemetery Souain-Perthes-lès-Hurlus,[8] Endgrablage: Kameradengrab.[9]
A cenotaph dedicated to August Macke and Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke was erected at Alter Friedhof in Bonn in 1991.[6]
Sources
- ↑ "Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558-1898", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NZ4D-XVV : 26 March 2020), August Robert Ludwig Macke, 1887.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Steinbicker, Clemens. Herkunft und familiärer Umkreis des Malers August Macke (1887-1914). In: Beiträge zur westfälischen Familienforschung 45, 1987, p. 91-124. (Genealogy August Macke cf. p. 105 ff.)
- ↑ English Wikipedia article on August Macke
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20070801190536/http://www.august-macke-haus.de/01e_version/macke/augustmacke.htm
- ↑ https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q94871054
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Find A Grave: Memorial #6909929
- ↑ Verlustlisten 1. Weltkrieg, page 2450: Macke August (Meschede)
- ↑ https://www.der-familienstammbaum.de/mementomori/verstorbene-prominente-1914/?id=3278_August-Macke
- ↑ Volksbund: August Macke
See also:
- Wikidata: Item Q33981
- German Wikipedia article on August Macke
- http://www.knerger.de/html/mackeaugbild__kunst_22.html
- Erdmann-Macke, Elisabeth. Erinnerung an August Macke. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987
- Museum August Macke Haus: Leben und Werk. August Macke 1887–1914
- Unsourced family tree handed down to Jim Holstein.
