Background
Christian Schad was born on August 21, 1894 in Miesbach, German Empire (present-day Miesbach, Germany). He was the son of a wealthy lawyer.
Akademiestraße 2-4, 80799 München, Germany
Academy of Fine Arts in Munich
Christian Schad was born on August 21, 1894 in Miesbach, German Empire (present-day Miesbach, Germany). He was the son of a wealthy lawyer.
Christian Schad did not complete his higher secondary education and in 1913 the painter enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he remained for barely a half-year.
Following the outbreak of the First World War, Schad obtained a medical report, exempting him from military service and moved to Zurich, where he lived until 1920. There he came into contact with the Dadaist circles and began to experiment with the collage technique and his schadographs (photographs, produced without a camera by printing objects on photo-sensitive paper).
Schad's paintings of 1915-1916 show the influence of Cubism and Futurism. His most famous oil painting of that period, Kreuzabnahme (Cross-Decrease), was painted in grayish tones with Walter Serner as the model.
When the war ended, he left for Italy. This period marked a turning point in his career. The painter's contact with the classical masters and the pessimism of the war’s aftermath brought about a change in his views on art, and he began to paint in a realistic, sober style, emphasizing man’s alienation and isolation in society. The subjects of his still-life paintings were given the same treatment.
After five years in Italy, Schad passed through Vienna, settling in Berlin in 1928. His artistic activity progressively decreased, when Hitler came to power and he did not take up painting until 1943, when he moved to Aschaffenburg and was commissioned to copy Matthias Grünewald’s Stuppach Madonna. He spent the rest of his life there.
After the Second World War, he evolved towards Magical Realism and returned to the photogram technique in the 1960s.
Marcella
Sonja
Unknown
Halbakt
Isabella
Marcella
Zwei Mädche
Self-Portrait with Model
Eva Von Arnheim
Unknown
Café d'Italia
Lotte
Self-Portrait
Portrait with Eiffel Tower
Dr. Haustein
Maria and Annunziata 'from the Harbour'
Portrait de Walter Serner
Self-Portrait
Marcella
Mexican Girl
Bettina
Unknown
Bettina
St. Genois d’Anneaucourt
Woman from Pozzuoli
Friends
Kreuzabnahme
The Operation
Imperial Countess Triangi-Taglioni
Maika
Portrait of Egon Erwin
Narcissus
Kinderbild Hans Joachim Zimper
Marianne von Meixner
Loving Boys
Im Irisgarten
Fräulein Mulino von Kluck
Notturno
Agosta, the Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove
Schad married Marcella Arcangeli, a native of Rome, in 1923. Their son, Nikolaus, was born in 1924. Three years later, in 1927, the couple divorced. In 1942, he married Bettina Mittelstädt.