Background
Räderscheidt was born in Cologne. His father was a schoolmaster who also wrote poetry.
Räderscheidt was born in Cologne. His father was a schoolmaster who also wrote poetry.
From 1910–1914, Räderscheidt studied at the Academy of Düsseldorf.
He was severely wounded in the First World War, during which he fought at Verdun. The group was short-lived, as Räderscheidt was by 1920 abandoning constructivism for a magic realist style. In 1925, he participated in the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity") exhibition at the Mannheim Kunsthalle.
The influence of metaphysical art is apparent in the way the mannequin-like figures stand detached from their environment and from each other.
In 1934–1935 he lived in Berlin. He fled to France in 1936, and settled in Paris, where his work became more colorful, curvilinear and rhythmic.
He was interned by the occupation authorities in 1940, but he escaped to Switzerland. In 1949 he returned to Cologne and resumed his work, producing many paintings of horses shortly before adopting an abstract style in 1957.
Räderscheidt was to return to the themes of his earlier work in some of his paintings of the 1960s.
After suffering a stroke in 1967, he had to relearn the act of painting. He produced a penetrating series of self-portraits in gouache in the final years of his life. Anton Räderscheidt died in Cologne in 1970.
After the war he returned to Cologne, where in 1919 he cofounded the artists" group Stupid with other members of the local constructivist and dada scene.