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Julius moessel biography

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From peer to obscurity: Julius Moessel and the fall of an artistic reputation

Related papers

American Modern: The Chicago School and the International Style at New York’s Museum of Modern Art

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

2014

Included in an anthology of essays about Chicago architecture and its influence, this essay focuses on the role played by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in creating and disseminating the idea of the “Chicago School of Architecture” to its influential audience during the 1930s. The museum’s promotion of a group of buildings and architects categorized under the heading “Chicago School” was influenced by the writing of avant-garde architects and critics in Europe, and was closely tied to parallel efforts to promote the so-called “International Style,” a depoliticized version of the modern style beginning to appear in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Starting with a modest exhibition, “Early Modern Architecture: Chicago 1870–1910,” curated in 1933 by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, MoMA positioned the early Chicago skyscraper as a formal object

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Portrait of the Painter, Moessel

Grell standing in front of his 1936 prize wining portrait at the Art Institute of Chicago, Municipal Art League best portrait. Julius Moessel (1871-1957) was a German born friend and fellow artist who moved to Chicago.  After Grell’s death in 1960, the portrait was acquired by Ruth Thomys, a close friend of the artists’ wife, Friedl.  The Grells, Thomys and Moessels were all close friends.  Ruth Thomys eventually moved to Santa Fe, NM with her husband and later invited the curator of the Munich Art Museum to visit her and offer her collection of Moessel paintings to the museum.  The first painting they selected was this one by Grell.  They also selected several Moessel paintings for their permanent collection.

oil on canvas, signed & dated lower left “LOUIS GRELL 1935”, Munich Municipal Art Museum permanent collection

Color Photos courtesy of Ruth Thomys Santa Fe, NM and Carolyn (Grell) Kintz at the Munich Museum

Black & White photos courtesy Ryerson Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago

http://www.artic.e

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Julius Moessel
(1872-1960)

Julius Moessel was born on October 10, 1872 in Furth, Germany. He began his formal training in Nurnberg, and later studied at the Munich Art Academy under the landscape painter Richard Von Seitz. After moving to the United States in 1926, he settled in Chicago in 1929 and continued his career as a painter, muralist and architect. Moessel became a very notable figure in the Chicago art scene between the late 1920s and 1950s. He was well-known for decorative paintings of exotic birds and tropical animals, as well as surreal figural works. A number of his more whimsical pieces adorned the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Moessel continued to paint and exhibit at least as late as 1956, dying in 1957 at the age of 85. His work is held in the permanent collections of major art museums in both Germany and the United States. Some of his notable mural works are situated at The Field Museum of Chicago, the Court Theater at Stuttgart, and the City Hall at Leipzig.

Member: Chicago Gallery Association; Chicago Painters & Sculptors.

Exhibited:

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