Max Kaus

Max Kaus (11 March 1891 - 5 August 1977) was a German "second generation" expressionist painter and graphic artist. He was also influential as a university level teacher and as deputy director at the Academy for visual arts ("Hochschule für Bildende Künste" / HfbK) in the city at that time known as West Berlin.

Life Family provenance and early years Max Kaus was born and, eighty-six years later, died in Berlin. Impatient to build a career, he moved into his first studio in 1913. and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The next year he met up with Otto Mueller and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff at the modernist so-called "Freie Sezession", and became a member of the group, his work regularly featuring in subsequent "Freie Sezession" exhibitions. In 1926 Kaus accepted a professorship, teaching landscape art at the Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschule (loosely, "Arts and Crafts academy") in Berlin. In 1937 his works were formally "removed from public view" in museums and galleries. However, he found himself under intensifying pressure to abandon teaching entirely as the dictatorship became more uncompromising in its approach to manifestations of non-standard thought patterns. Sources differ as to whether it was in 1938 There was little scope for landscape paintings and he reverted to portraiture, his favourite subject being now his wife, known as "Turu". Portraits survive of Turu awake and of Turu asleep, sometimes contorted into positions that must have been desperately uncomfortable, and wearing a wide array of outfits: commentators infer profound love and affection from these paintings. The physical event marking the suppression was the DKB's final exhibition (till after 1945) which was held in Hamburg, and at which Kaus participated with his "Porträt Frau im Spiegel" ("Portrait of a woman in the mirror"). Between 1951 and 1971 he served as a member of the executive board of the now re-established DKB, serving also as deputy chair between 1956 and 1963.

Awards and honours (selection)