Alexander Kanoldt (1881 - 1939)
Alexander Kanoldt, 1881 – 1939, German magic realist painter and one of the artists of the New Objectivity.
After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Alexander Kanoldt went to Munich in 1908, where he met modernists such as Alexei Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter and became a member of the Munich New Secession in 1913, with Jawlensky and Paul Klee.
By the early 1920s Kanoldt developed the manner for which he is best known, a magic realist rendering of potted plants, angular tins, fruit and mugs on tabletops. He also painted portraits in the same severe style, as well as geometrical landscapes. In 1925 he was made a professor at Breslau Academy, a post he held until 1931. During this time he came into conflict with the Bauhaus faction at the Academy, and he was increasingly at odds with the avant garde. From 1933 until his resignation in 1936 he was the director of the State School of Art in Berlin.
With the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 Kanoldt attempted accommodation, painting in a romantic style, but nonetheless many of his works were seized by the authorities as degenerate art in 1937. He died in Berlin in 1939.
