DOI Heft:
No. 94 (January, 1901)
DOI Artikel:Blei, Franz: Peter Behrens, a German artist
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19786#0265
Peter Behrens
PETER BEHRENS—A GERMAN the abstract in concrete form; his art speaks to us
ARTIST. BY FRANZ BLEI. through sense.
About 1890 Behrens, who is a Hamburger
Peter Behrens has not worked at by birth, sent his first pictures to the exhibitions
artistic crafts as a pastime, and neither has he in the Glaspalast at Munich. People were then
regarded crafts as the one application of art. His beginning, for almost the first time in Germany,
productions do not spring from caprice, but grow to see things picturesquely, i.e., with their eyes,
out of that universality of the artistic life that we in place of the dry understanding that had
find in old masters, such as Durer and Leonardo, hitherto blinded them to Nature. Air, light,
out of that untrammelled lust of creating that colour ! became the war-cry, and the youth of
loves to manifest itself in the simplest medium as the land followed, among them Behrens with his
well as in the highest, that recognises no difference twenty years. For many the good things learnt in
of rank in the medium, that feels at home in all, the school of Impressionism sufficed, but not for
adapts itself to all, and extracts from everything Behrens. He went the way of youth and of his
its full measure of inherent beauty. In thus time, and of all that was new and living in his time,
describing Behrens' manner of treating his medium as all healthy youth must, but even his first pictures
and his respect for it, I hasten to add that the bear his own peculiar stamp, his landscapes and
artist's universality has nothing in common with his men and women are painted from Nature, and
the subjectiveness of the dilettante, which desires have nothing of the brutal curiosity of the plein
nothing but the opportunity of expressing itself, air artist who seeks for unusual effects and
regardless of results. Everything pertaining to wishes to astonish. Though Behrens also practised
Behrens' personality is covered, so to speak, with the reduction of colours to their "values," and
the garment of art. He has the gift of presenting adopted the nebulous contours of the impression-
"STURM " FROM A CHROMO-XYLOC1RAPH BY PETER BEHRENS
237
PETER BEHRENS—A GERMAN the abstract in concrete form; his art speaks to us
ARTIST. BY FRANZ BLEI. through sense.
About 1890 Behrens, who is a Hamburger
Peter Behrens has not worked at by birth, sent his first pictures to the exhibitions
artistic crafts as a pastime, and neither has he in the Glaspalast at Munich. People were then
regarded crafts as the one application of art. His beginning, for almost the first time in Germany,
productions do not spring from caprice, but grow to see things picturesquely, i.e., with their eyes,
out of that universality of the artistic life that we in place of the dry understanding that had
find in old masters, such as Durer and Leonardo, hitherto blinded them to Nature. Air, light,
out of that untrammelled lust of creating that colour ! became the war-cry, and the youth of
loves to manifest itself in the simplest medium as the land followed, among them Behrens with his
well as in the highest, that recognises no difference twenty years. For many the good things learnt in
of rank in the medium, that feels at home in all, the school of Impressionism sufficed, but not for
adapts itself to all, and extracts from everything Behrens. He went the way of youth and of his
its full measure of inherent beauty. In thus time, and of all that was new and living in his time,
describing Behrens' manner of treating his medium as all healthy youth must, but even his first pictures
and his respect for it, I hasten to add that the bear his own peculiar stamp, his landscapes and
artist's universality has nothing in common with his men and women are painted from Nature, and
the subjectiveness of the dilettante, which desires have nothing of the brutal curiosity of the plein
nothing but the opportunity of expressing itself, air artist who seeks for unusual effects and
regardless of results. Everything pertaining to wishes to astonish. Though Behrens also practised
Behrens' personality is covered, so to speak, with the reduction of colours to their "values," and
the garment of art. He has the gift of presenting adopted the nebulous contours of the impression-
"STURM " FROM A CHROMO-XYLOC1RAPH BY PETER BEHRENS
237