Deutsch
Magnus Zeller grew up in a pastor's family in Biesenrode in the southern Harz Mountains and moved to Magdeburg with his parents in 1901. In 1906 he went to Berlin, where he studied painting and sculpture with Lovis Corinth from 1908 to 1911. In 1912 he exhibited his works in Berlin for the first time. From 1915 to 1918 he did military service. From 1913 Zeller was a member of the artists' association Freie Secession and the Association of Visual Artists in Berlin; he had contacts with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and was friends with Arnold Zweig. In 1918 he was a member of a soldiers' council of the supreme army command and took part in the plenary assembly of the Berlin workers' and soldiers' councils on November 10, 1918. In 1920 Zeller published the portfolios “Rapture and Aufruhr” created in 1917/8 together with Arnold Zweig and “Revolutionzeit” about the revolutionary year 1918. In 1921 he published book illustrations for the first time. From 1923 to 1924 Zeller taught at the State Art School in Tartu (Dorpat) in Estonia, where the painter and graphic artist Karin Luts studied with him. In 1926 he traveled to Paris to study the works of Honoré Daumier and Eugène Delacroix. From 1929 Zeller took part in numerous exhibitions, e.g. B. 1924 to 1942 regularly at the Berlin Academy exhibitions. 1924 to 1937 he lived in Berlin and in Blomberg/Lippe and from 1937 in Caputh, Brandenburg. Zeller spent the summer of 1935 in the painter's town of Kallmünz. From autumn 1935 to 1936 he stayed in Rome at the Villa Massimo on a scholarship. In 1937 Zeller returned to Germany. As part of the "Degenerate Art" campaign, six of Zeller's works were confiscated and destroyed from Berlin city property and the König Albert Museum in Zwickau. The purchase of painting material was denied to him by the city authorities.From 1938 he secretly dealt artistically with events during the National Socialist era. After the end of World War II, Zeller joined the SPD, then the SED. In 1948 his second wife Helga moved to Hamburg with their son Conrad, he stayed in Caputh with their daughter Helga. In 1951, against the background of the formalism/realism debate, Zeller was voted out of the board of directors of the Association of Visual Artists in the GDR. In 1962 he received a medal for his artwork and participation in the workers' struggles in the years 1918-1923. Zeller was represented in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR at most of the important national exhibitions, e.g. 1946 at the General German Art Exhibition and 1949 at the 2nd German Art Exhibition in Dresden. In 1968 Zeller received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver. Zeller belonged to the second generation of Expressionists in Germany. In his early work he used cubist forms and arranged colors in a prism shape. Due to his choice of colors with a tendency towards the uncanny and surreal, this earned Zeller the nickname “E. T. A. Hoffmann of Color". He painted against the war with grotesques and satire, but also sought beauty in images of people and nature. From 1935 he began to deal with contemporary issues. His work from 1945 is characterized by anti-militarism, everyday, human and animal images. Zeller's written legacy is kept in the archive of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.
To:


From:


Message: