Background
Max Slevogt was born in Landshut, Germany, in 1868.
Max Slevogt was born in Landshut, Germany, in 1868.
From 1885 to 1889 he studied at the Munich Academy, and his early paintings are dark in tone, exemplifying the prevailing style in Munich. In 1889 Slevogt visited Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian.
He was, together with Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann, one of the foremost representatives in Germany of the plein air style.
In 1896, he drew caricatures for the magazines Simplicissimus and Jugend, and the next year he had his first solo exhibition in Vienna. Toward the end of the 1890s his palette brightened.
He travelled again to Paris in 1900, where he was represented in the German pavilion of the world exhibition with the work Scheherezade, and was greatly impressed by the paintings of Édouard Manet. In 1901 he joined the Berlin Secession. A trip to Egypt in 1914 resulted in 21 paintings as well as numerous watercolors and drawings.
On the return journey he stopped off in Italy. In June he acquired the country seat Neukastel. After the outbreak of World War I he was sent as official war painter to the western front.
The war experience brought about a search for new style appropriate to the expression of the horrors of war. He designed scenery for the performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni in the Dresdner state opera in 1924. In 1929 he was given a large 60th birthday exhibition in the Prussian academy of the arts in Berlin.
During the last year of his life he worked on the religious mural Golgatha in the peace church in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine. It was destroyed by bombing raids during World War II. Max Slevogt died in Leinsweiler (at that time in the Rheinpfalz part of Bavaria) in 1932. He is buried in the burial place of the family Finkler east of his house, the so-called Slevogthof (with wall paintings) at Neukastel.
Girl in front of the Lion Cage
Autumn Forest
A Portrait of the Artist
Under an Arbour
The Circus
The Nile at Aswan
Slevogt family in the garden of Godramstein
Lady in White Dress on Horseback Riding
Tiger in the Jungle
Anna Pawlowa
Dance of Death
The Family Doctor János Plesch
Magic Flute Scene
Francisco d'Andrade, Reading a Newspaper
Summer House Garden
Portrait of Carl Steinbart
Portrait of Nina and Wolfgang Slevogt (Children in the Forest)
Bathing House Havel
The Prodigal Son
Park Landscape in the Palatinate
Nini on Trellising
Portrait of Alexa Pfeiffer
Title Page
Don Juan's Encounter with the Stony Gues
The Dancer Marietta di Rigardo
Danae
Portrait of Julius Freund
Portrait of Francisco d'Andrade
Artist's children in garden
Achill
The dancer Marietta di Rigardo