Thilo Maatsch (1900-1983) - Abstrakte Komposition

COMPOSITIONAL PAINTING
(Kurt Leonard on Thilo Maatsch 1976)

In the auction there is an abstract composition by the eminent German artist Thilo Maatsch from 1923. The edition is probably from the 1960s; an edition number does not exist. Size: 20 x 22.5 cm, motif size 15 x 9 cm. The condition is very good. The sheet is flawless. The woodcut on thin Japanese paper is signed under the motif on the right.

In a parallel auction there are two more MAATSCH prints as well as the German constructivists KESTING and BUCHHOLZ.

VITA THILO MAATSCH (Source among others: Wikipedia)

Thilo Friedrich Maatsch (born 13 August 1900 in Braunschweig; died 20 March 1983 in Königslutter) was a German graphic artist, painter and sculptor. He was an artist of abstract and concrete art as well as constructivism.

In 1918 Maatsch founded the “Society of Friends of Young Art” in Braunschweig with Rudolf Jahns and Johannes Molzahn. Members included, among others, Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. Additionally, Wassily Kandinsky, who supported Maatsch and admired Maatsch as his own father, designed the group’s insignia. Still in the same year Maatsch befriended art collector Otto Ralfs. In 1919 and 1921 he visited Heinrich Vogeler in Worpswede.

In 1924 the first purchase of a work by Thilo Maatsch was made by Braunschweig collector Otto Ralfs. He came to Maatsch’s one-room apartment with Nina and Wassily Kandinsky to select an oil painting. For Maatsch it was a great honor to have his work in a collection beside pieces by Mondrian, Kandinsky, Klee and several other already well-known artists at that time. In 1925 Ralfs organized an exhibition of the “Society of Friends of Young Art.”

At the Bauhaus in Weimar and later Dessau he befriended Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, László Moholy-Nagy, William Wauer and Lothar Schreyer. Kandinsky, Klee as well as Moholy-Nagy allowed him to stay in their studios and study with them. He was not only friends with Kurt Schwitters, but shared a similar formal language, which is why Maatsch is sometimes counted among Schwitters’ circle.

Still in the same year, Maatsch joined the November group and became a member there. This was followed by annual participation up to 1932 in the “Great Berlin Art Exhibition.” In 1927 Herwarth Walden even organized, in his Der Sturm gallery, an exhibition – as Maatsch himself stated with pride in a 1970 retrospective – of at least 50 graphics and about 10 watercolors and several paintings, a solo show.

Under National Socialism, as for many other avant-garde artists, there was a collapse. In 1933 Maatsch’s artworks were confiscated for the first time. In 1934 he was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts, Maatsch was listed as “degenerate.”

Twenty years after the war, roughly from 1966 onward, his rediscovery followed, and from that time on there was a rapid succession of exhibitions. Works by Maatsch were acquired by better-known private collections, notably Carl Lazlo, who actively supported him by publishing, among other things, several portfolio editions and a book publication, as well as Alfred and Elisabeth Hoh. Highly regarded, Thilo Maatsch left this life in Königslutter in 1983.