August
Macke
(b Meschede, Westphalia, 3 Jan 1887; d nr
Perthes-les-Hurlus, Champagne, 26 Sept 1914).
German painter. He began his artistic training in autumn 1904 at the
Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, but he was far more interested by the
instruction at the Kunstgewerbeschule, run by Peter Behrens, where he
attended evening courses given by the German printmaker Fritz Helmuth
Ehmcke (1878–1965). Friendship with the playwrights of the Düsseldorfer
Theater, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn and Herbert Eulenberg, awakened Macke’s
interest in the stage. With the German sculptor Claus Cito, he developed
designs for stage sets, including those for a production of Macbeth,
which led to an offer by the theatre to employ him, but Macke turned it
down. In April 1905 Macke travelled with Walter Gerhardt, his future wife
Elizabeth Gerhardt’s brother, to northern Italy and Florence. His drawings
of this period reveal freshness and a receptive sensibility. In July 1906
he travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium with Schmidtbonn, Eulenberg
and Cito, continuing on with Schmidtbonn to London, where he visited the
city’s museums. In November 1906 he broke off his studies at the academy.
After encountering French Impressionism on a trip to Paris in summer 1907,
Macke began to paint in this manner; in autumn of that year he went to
Berlin to join the studio of the German painter Lovis Corinth. However,
work in the studio, and Corinth’s way of suggesting corrections, did not
suit Macke’s temperament, nor did the city’s oppressive atmosphere. He
returned to Bonn in early 1908. His future wife’s family provided him with
the means for further travel, first to Italy and then together with his
wife and her uncle Bernhard Koehler, who later became his patron, to
Paris. Through Koehler he gained an insight into the art market in Paris
and became acquainted with Ambroise Vollard. In 1908–9 Macke discharged
himself from his one-year military service. Once again in Paris on his
honeymoon in 1909, he met Louis Moilliet and, through him, Karl Hofer.
