MAX

KLINGER (1857– )  , German painter, etcher and sculptor, was born at Plagwitz near Leipzig . He attended the classes at the Carlsruhe art school in 1874, and went in the following year to Berlin, where in 1878 he created a sensation at the Academy exhibition with two series of pen-and-ink drawings—the " Series upon the Theme of Christ " and " Fantasies upon the Finding of a Glove." The daring originality of these imaginative and eccentric works caused an outburst of indignation, and the artist was voted insane; nevertheless the " Glove " series was bought by the Berlin National Gallery . His painting of " The Judgment of Paris " caused a similar storm of indignant protest in 1887, owing to its rejection of all conventional attributes and the naive directness of the conception . His vivid and somewhat morbid imagination, with its leaning towards the gruesome and disagreeable, and the Goyaesque turn of his mind, found their best expression in his "cycles" of etchings: "Deliverances of Sacrificial Victims told in Ovid," " A Brahms Phantasy," " Eve and the Future," "A Life," and "Of Death"; but in his use of the needle he does not aim at the technical excellence of the great masters; it supplies him merely with means of expressing his ideas . After 1886 Klinger devoted himself more exclusively to painting and sculpture . In his painting he aims neither at classic beauty nor modern truth, but at grim impressiveness not without a touch of mysticism . His " Pietk" at the Dresden Gallery, the frescoes at the Leipzig University, and the " Christ in Olympus," at the Modern Gallery in Vienna, are characteristic examples of his art . The Leipzig Museum contains his sculptured "Salome" and " Cassandra." In sculpture he favours the use of varicoloured materials in the manner of the Greek chryselephantine sculpture . His "Beethoven" is a notable instance of his work in this direction .