Walter Leistikow

Alongside Max Liebermann and Lesser Ury, Walter Leistikow was one of the great names in Berlin painting around 1900. Together with Liebermann, he founded the “Secession” and was awarded the title of professor in 1907. It is therefore not surprising that T. Kempas wrote in his foreword to the landmark Leistikow exhibition in Berlin in 1989: “He was the most energetic campaigner for modernism in Germany at the turn of the century.” Numerous museums in Germany and abroad acquired his works. As a pupil of H. Gude, Leistikow’s artistic beginnings can be traced back to the Düsseldorf School of Painting and Achenbach.

The artist had been living in Berlin since 1883 and found his own world of motifs in the capital’s surroundings, characterised by pine forests and lakes: “Quiet pictures, brightly magical, cheerfully melancholy, devoid of people.” Kaiser Wilhelm II did not share this opinion. The monarch expressed his anger: “He ruined the whole Grunewald”, whereupon the painter burst into tears. He found comfort and support from his fellow painter, the great German Impressionist Lovis Corinth, among others. He, in turn, was enthusiastic about Leistikow’s painting: “In the Mark Brandenburg … his eyes were suddenly opened to the austere beauty of the Brandenburg forests and lakes. The melancholy charm that lies in the pine forests, how the dark treetops stand out gnarled against the wafting clouds and are reflected in black pools at their feet, Leistikow understood how to depict like no other. He has become the interpreter of this brittle nature for the world. Not as if he had even found these motifs first, but his pictures first forced other artists and laymen to admire them” (from: “Die Berliner Moderne 1885-1914”, Stuttgart 1987 p. 553).