Georg Muche

Georg Muche
Georg Muche, 1926
Born	(1895-05-08)8 May 1895 Querfurt, Germany
Died	26 March 1987(1987-03-26) (aged 91) Lindau, Germany
Nationality	German
Known for	Painting, printmaking

Georg Muche (8 May 1895 – 26 March 1987) was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher.

Georg Muche was born on 8 May 1895 in Querfurt, in the south of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany and grew up in the Rhön area. His father, Felix Muche, was a naïve painter and art collector who was known as Felix Ramholz.

Muche's art studies began in 1913 in Munich at the School for Painting and the Graphic Arts which had been founded by Anton Ažbe and was then owned by Paul Weinhold and Felix Eisengräber. In 1914 he applied to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, but failed the entrance examination. His study of painting resumed in 1915, with Martin Brandenburg, when he moved to Berlin. At this time he had already been influenced by Wassily Kandinsky and Max Ernst, and became one of the earliest proponents of abstract art in Germany.

In Berlin, Muche became associated with Herwarth Walden and his Sturm artist group, working as Walden's exhibition assistant at the Sturm Gallery. He also taught painting at the Sturm Art School from 1916 to 1920. Muche's exposure to the Expressionist world influenced him to become more unconventional in his work, creating abstractions that combined elements of Cubism with the colour ideals of Der Blaue Reiter and Marc Chagall. He participated in three exhibitions from 1916 to 1918, each of which paired his work with that of another artist: Max Ernst (1916), Paul Klee, and Alexander Archipenko (1918). From 1913 to 1923, Muche produced prints which showed a strong influence by Klee, as well as Marc Chagall.