Maxim Kopf Explained

Maxim Kopf (born Maximilian Kopf; 18 January 1892 – 6 July 1958) was an Austrian-American painter, graphic artist and sculptor. He worked in Prague and was a prominent figure of German cultural life in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period.[1] [2] He was initially strongly influenced by Expressionism and later primarily created works with biblical themes as well as city and landscape images. He is also called a cosmopolitan painter because he created his paintings in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Polynesia and the United States. He traveled extensively and visited Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Dalmatia, Bessarabia and Crimea, among other places.[3]

Life and work

Maxim Kopf was born on 18 January 1892 in Vienna as the second of four children of the Austrian civil servant Emil Kopf (1863–1911) and his wife Louisa, née Jagemann (died 1865). He grew up in a German-speaking family and probably also had Czech roots through his grandmother Maria Truhelková. Starting in 1911, he studied under August Brömse, Franz Thiele, Vlaho Bukovac, and Karl Krattner at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. During the war he was an officer in the Joint Army of Austria-Hungary. After the end of the war he chose Czechoslovakian citizenship and stayed in Prague. He was a member of the Metznerbund and in 1919, with August Brömse, co-founder of the artist group Die Pilger, an association of German and German-speaking artists in Bohemia. The group initially included other students of Brömse such as Josef Hegenbarth, Emil Helzel, Norbert Hochsieder, Julius Pfeiffer and Leo Sternhell. Mary Duras, Walther Klemm, Moriz Melzer and Emil Orlik later joined the group, which existed until 1925. In 1920 he received a prize from the Prague Academy for the picture The Pilgrim. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to continue his studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts under Otto Gussmann (1869–1926) from 1921 to 1923.

thumb|Landscape in French Polynesia (Moorea) - 1938Kopf traveled to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in 1924 and began his first South Seas cycle. In 1925 he worked for the Ziegfeld Theater. Here, he was able to organize an exhibition in the New Gallery for visiting artists Hilde Goldschmidt, Friedrich Karl Gotsch and Hans Meyboden.[4]

He then stayed in Paris and Montrouge and then lived again in Prague, where his first marriage was to the sculptor Mary Duras in 1927, with whom he had already spent time in New York in 1923. In Prague in 1927 he founded the Young Art group, which had its first exhibition in 1928 and from which the Prague Secession emerged in 1929. In the same year he also stayed in the Giant Mountains.[5] In 1932 he traveled to Italy and stayed in Torbole on Lake Garda. In 1933–34 he worked on the large ceiling fresco of the former German House in Prague. His marriage to Duras ended in divorce in 1933. In 1936 he married the actress Lotte Stein in Prague, but this marriage also ended in divorce in the 1940s.

At the end of the summer of 1934 he undertook his second voyage via Suez, Ceylon, Singapore, Sydney and New Caledonia to Tahiti, which resulted in the pictures of the second South Sea cycle. He returned to Prague in the spring of 1935 via Martinique. In 1936 he spent a month visiting countries on the Black Sea, including the USSR, Bessarabia, Sevastopol and Yalta in Crimea. In May 1938 he traveled to Tahiti for the third time; he returned to Prague in autumn 1938. After the fall of Czechoslovakia, he fled from Prague via Germany and Holland to Paris in March 1939, staying in Czechoslovakia's Maison de la Culture until September. He was then arrested and interned as an enemy alien for five months. He then went to French Morocco as a member of the French Foreign Legion, but was interned again after France capitulated. His next stop was Martinique, where he was also interned, so that he spent a total of over two years in camps. It was not until 1941 that he was able to emigrate to the United States and came to New York.[6] In 1942 he received American citizenship. In the summer of 1942 he met the journalist Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961), who he portrayed in her home on the Twin Farms farm in Barnard, Vermont. About a year later, Dorothy Thompson and Maxim Kopf were married in Barnard.[7] In 1944 he exhibited at the American British Art Center.[8] In the summer of 1945 he visited Prague for the last time with Dorothy Thompson and her son.[9] His last trip to Tahiti took place in April 1952.

Kopf died on July 6, 1958, in Lebanon, New Hampshire and was buried at Barnard Village Cemetery in Barnard, Windsor County, Vermont. He and Dorothy Thompson were buried in Barnard Cemetery.[10]

Exhibitions

Exhibitions with works by Maxim Kopf

Selected works

Maxim Kopf was a very productive, cosmopolitan painter whose works can be found in Europe and the USA.

A large number of his works were represented at art auctions.[32]

Collections

Works by Maxim Kopf are represented in the following collections:[33]

Miscellaneous

Kopf created an Ex Libris (bookplate) for Dorothy Thompson . It shows a female figure walking over a devil figure, carrying a book in her raised hands.[34]

Works cited

Notes and References

  1. https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd116331933.html Deutsche Biographie – Maxim Kopf
  2. https://cs.isabart.org/person/6408 Isabart - Maxim Kopf
  3. Maxim Kopf (1892–1958). Ivo. Habán. Masaryk University. Brno. 2001. 103–106. cs.
  4. Walter Schurian (Editor): Hilde Goldschmidt. Hartmann, Munich 1983, pp. 9–11.
  5. Marek Nekula, Walter Koschmal and Joachim Rogall (editors), Deutsche und Tschechen. Geschichte - Kultur - Politik, C. H. Beck 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-45954-2, p. 246 et seq.
  6. Philip Hamburger, The Talk of the Town. Mr. Kopf, in: The New Yorker, 25 November 1944, p. 17
  7. Dorothy Thompson to Wed Maxim Kopf, Czech, in June, in: St. Petersburg Times, 13 April 1943, p. 4
  8. https://web.archive.org/web/20220625045956/https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1944&_f=md056957 (archive) American British Art Center 1944
  9. https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,775983,00.html Time: Two Faces of Freedom
  10. John J. Duffy u. a. (Hg.), The Vermont Encyclopedia, University Press of New England 2003, ISBN 978-1-58465-086-7, p. 48
  11. Habánová (2017), p. 172
  12. abánová (2013), p. 40
  13. https://sbirky.ngprague.cz/dielo/CZE:NG.O_4210 Nationalgalerie Prag - Maxim Kopf: Poutník (1920)
  14. Habánová (2013), p. 44
  15. Habánová (2013), p. 51
  16. Habánová (2013), p. 54
  17. Habánová (2013), p. 119
  18. Habánová (2013), p. 138
  19. Habánová (2013), p. 225
  20. https://sbirky.ngprague.cz/dielo/CZE:NG.O_11613 Nationalgalerie Prag - Maxim Kopf: Vize (1920)
  21. Habánová (2013), p. 245
  22. Habánová (2013), p. 246
  23. Habánová (2013), p. 262
  24. Habánová (2013), p. 267
  25. Habánová (2013), p. 268
  26. Habánová (2013), p. 340
  27. https://sbirky.ngprague.cz/dielo/CZE:NG.O_4343 Nationalgalerie Prag - Maxim Kopf: Times Square (1924)
  28. https://www.askart.com/Auction_Records/Maxim_Kopf/103153/Maxim_Kopf.aspx?lot=6252670 Askart - Maxim Kopf
  29. https://www.ngprague.cz/o-nas/novinky/archiv-maxim-kopf Nationalgalerie Prag: 130 let od narození Maxima Kopfa
  30. http://www.gavu.cz/data/654-654-kopf_om_web.pdf Ausstellung der Kunstgalerie Cheb
  31. https://www.kunstforum.net/werke/selbstbildnis Kunstforum - Maxim Kopf: Selbstbildnis
  32. http://www.artnet.de/artistes/maxim-kopf/ Maxi Kopf
  33. https://www.askart.com/artist_museums/Maxim_Kopf/103153/Maxim_Kopf.aspx Askart: Maxim Kopf - Museums
  34. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7NCogbYygV0/S7gKDCFuuOI/AAAAAAAADZc/oSH2RJW1Ipw/s1600/thompson.jpg Exlibris: Dorothy Thompson

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