Background
Adolf Dietrich was born on November 9, 1877, in Berlingen, Frauenfeld District, Thurgau, Switzerland. He was the youngest of seven children born to a poor Swiss farming family.
1906
The Artist's Parents
1918
Adolph Dietrich, sel-portrait
Adolf Dietrich was born on November 9, 1877, in Berlingen, Frauenfeld District, Thurgau, Switzerland. He was the youngest of seven children born to a poor Swiss farming family.
As a child, young Adolf displayed no small amount of talent. His school teacher suggested he become a lithographer. However, his parents would have no part of their son being shipped off to "who knows where" to learn "who knows what." He was needed on the farm.
Despite this hard scrabble, ragged, rugged existence, Adolf Dietrich literally became a "Sunday painter." For years, he labored and learned, proving to himself and others that you learn to paint by painting a lot.
Dietrich's first minor recognition came in 1913 when his work was first displayed in conjunction with Germany's Neue Sachlachkeit movement. He came to be known as the "German Rousseau" (even though he was Swiss) because of his naïve style and almost magical realism—an association that the artist took an active hand in producing and promoting – and was able to stop working and live off the income provided by his art.
Under National Socialism, his work was initally well received. His landscapes of the German coast were accepted as part of the German New Romantic movement and praised as representations of new German reality.
Berlingen Seen from the Untersee
1926Landschaft mit Zaunkönig
1952Graue Winterlandschaft bei Mannenbach
1940Sechs Meerschweinchen im Stall
1934Zaunkönigpaar (Hagschlüpferli)
1937Waldrand
1918Still life with vegetables, mice and rabbits
1928Schiffuntergang vor Berlingen
Margeritenstrauss mit Kanarienvogel
1954BILD VOM VATER
1932A Gentleman
1928Nachbargarten im Herbst
1931Untitled
Sojabohnen
1956Birds on Riser
1944Novembersonne am Untersee
1941Blue tit on a brach of a larch
1946Herbst am Untersee
1952Balbo lying on the lawn
1955Anbetung der Könige
1939Vater des Künstlers
Goldregen im Eugensberg
1928Blauer Wintertag mit Schienerberg
1940Blühender Schlangenkaktus vor Seelandschaft
1944Edge of the Forest near Langenargen
1917Spring time at Lake Constance
1932Schlüsselblumen
1953Marder
1954Sleigh Ride
1939Adolf Dietrich never married.