Jakob Dietz
(1899–1955)
Village Church
Watercolour
Dimensions: 46 x 35 cm
Dimensions with Passepartout: 80 x 60 cm
Signed lower left
Biografie
Jakob Dietz (1889–1960) received his first lessons from the university art teacher in Erlangen; from 1904 to 1908 he attended the Nuremberg School of Applied Arts and was a pupil of Hermann Bek-Gran. From 1909 to 1913 he was employed as a commercial artist; in 1914 he completed his self-taught training as a painter. From 1914 to 1920, he served in the war and was taken prisoner by the French. After his release, he worked as a freelance artist and art teacher in Erlangen, maintaining a studio in the Orangery until 1924. From 1924 onwards, he worked as a freelancer in Nuremberg, initially as a graphic designer and commercial artist, and later as a painter, specialising in landscape painting. He travelled to Spain and Paris. His printmaking is characterised by an experimental approach; until 1930, he produced woodcuts and colour woodcuts in small editions, and later a number of landscape etchings. At exhibitions in Nuremberg from 1930 onwards, he was represented with landscapes, still lifes and, rarely, portraits. He moved away from the Nuremberg local style characterised by Rudolf Schiestl and Hermann Gradl, turning instead to an individual, expressive visual language. His predominantly dark colour palette lightened in his later years, taking on an Impressionist quality. In the 1930s, he was one of the leading Franconian landscape painters; during the Third Reich, he was temporarily ostracised. (Source: Nuremberg Artists’ Encyclopaedia, p. 266)
