Ludwig Meidner, Burned Out (Homeless), 1912
Ludwig Meidner, Burned Out (Homeless), 1912
In the summer of 1912 [...] I unloaded my obsessions onto canvas day and night – Judgment days, world’s ends and gibbets of skulls, for in those days the great universal storm was already bearing its teeth and casting its glaring yellow shadow across my whimpering brush-hand. I founded the group "Die Pathetiker" with two comrades and we exhibited for the first time under this banner in Berlin in autumn the same year. The following years were filled with restlessness and an insatiable need to work at breakneck speed.
Ludwig Meidner, Mein Leben (My Life), in: Lothar Brieger, Ludwig Meidner. Mit einer Selbstbiographie des Künstlers, einem farbigen Titelbild und 52 Abbildungen (Junge Kunst, Bd. 4), Leipzig 1919
The "Pathetiker" exhibition in Ludwig Walden's gallery "Der Sturm" in 1912 proved to be Ludwig Meidner's breakthrough as an artist. The "Pathetiker" was a short-lived group of artists made up of Meidner, Jakob Steinhardt and Richard Janthur. The group’s name was derived from the "New Pathos", a term used by Stefan Zweig in 1909 to describe the new poetry of the time and one of several labels later replaced by Kurt Hiller’s term "Expressionism".
The so-called "Apocalyptic Landscapes", a series of paintings produced by Meidner between 1912 and 1916 and characterized by themes of catastrophe and Armageddon, have often been interpreted as anticipating the First World War and are by far the most well-known of the artist's works. While the later paintings from this group frequently show sweeping landscape panoramas from a bird’s eye view, this earlier composition focuses on a group of people in the foreground of a landscape bathed in a cold blue. The pale, unreal light, which does not permit any clear spatial assignment, suggests a night-time scene. The desperate people lie or cower before the ruins of a burned-out house, robbed of their refuge. The defenselessness of the homeless group is demonstrated by the figure in the middle of the picture, whose naked feet are turned toward the beholder.
Further reading:
Horcher in die Zeit. Ludwig Meidner im Exil (exhibition catalog Museum Giersch der Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main), München 2016.
Gerda Breuer und Ines Wagemann: Ludwig Meidner. Zeichner, Maler, Literat. 1884-1966. 2 Bde. (exhibition catalog Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt), Stuttgart 1991.
Thomas Grochowiak: Ludwig Meidner, Recklinghausen 1966.
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