AUGUST BABBERGER

The authenticity of the work has been confirmed by Andreas Gabelmann, September 2016.

Provenance:
- Private collection, Switzerland
- Private collection, San Francisco.
- Private collection, New York.

In 1895 the Babbergers came from Germany to Basel, Switzerland, where August Babberger spent the best part of his school days and later completed an apprenticeship with a master painter. Back in Germany he attended a course in etching for a year, and finally received a scholarship for the Accademia Internationale di Belle Arti in Florence, where Augusto Giacometti was his teacher from 1909 to 1911. Symbolism and Art Nouveau influenced Babberger’s early work. His model was Ferdinand Hodler, and the links to his style in some of the paintings is unmistakable. After his studies in Florence, Babberger began to become more and more involved in landscape. Through his wife who was from Lucerne, he familiarised himself with the Swiss landscape around Lake Lucerne, which became his second home, with its surrounding body of mountains providing inspiration and fascination. From 1915 the summit of the Pilatus caught his interest and in subsequent years it became the main subject of his pictures. From 1917 Babberger eventually found his way into Expressionism, which manifested itself in many of his pictures. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Babberger’s art was classed as degenerate (“entartet”) and he lost his position as Professor of decorative painting at the academy in Karlsruhe. After his dismissal, he joined his wife in Switzerland, where he died in 1936 following an operation. After Babberger’s death a number of his paintings were seized from German museums and later shown at the “Entartete Kunst” exhibition.

The present work is a typical example of Babberger’s art circa 1915/16. As subject he has chosen his preferred landscape of Lake Lucerne and the Pilatus. Stylistically, Hodler’s influence is strongly in evidence. In addition, the intensification of the colours and the simplification of the forms also show the influence of Augusto Giacometti. Although Babberger is one of the forgotten German-Swiss artists, with his comprehensive body of work in many museums, we may now regard him as one of the important expressionist artists of the classic modern period.