Black and White Photography of painter Giulio Beda, ca. 1906, photo: privately owned, reproduction Zweckverband Dachauer Galerien und Museen

He was the son of the genre-painter Francesco-Antonio Beda of Triest, from whom he received his first lessons in painting and drawing. From 1892 he studied at the Academy of Art in Venice first taking anatomy classes and then from 1894 to 1896 was taught landscape and maritime painting by Guglielmo Ciardi. When his father died in 1900 he went to Heinrich Knirr's private school of art in Munich. In 1907 he settled in Dachau and bought a house in Polln Street 4.

Portrait photo of the artist Bernhard Buttersack. Photo: reproduction from book, Museum association Dachau

Having at first studied architecture, Buttersack in 1877 attended the Stuttgart School of Art. In 1879 he visited Polling and in 1881 Dachau. There he became friendly with Hermann Baisch and in 1882 became his master-pupil at the Academy of Art in Karlsruhe. He then lived in Munich up to 1892 when he moved to Dachau for three years before building a house in nearby Haimhausen in 1895 and running a school of painting there.

The Harvard graduate Robert Franz Curry came to Stuttgart in 1891 to study architecture. He soon turned entirely to painting and enrolled at the Academy of Art in Munich to continue his studies with Heinrich Knirr and Carl Marr. From there he visited the artists' colony of Dachau. Curry was very successful with his portraits, landscape and animal paintings. From 1930 to 1940 he lived in Oberstdorf and from 1941 in Riederau on Ammersee.

Ludwig Dill, Foto: Arthur Rößler, Neu Dachau, Knackfuß-Monographien, Bd. 78, Bielefeld/Leipzig 1905, S. 44

Ludwig Dill studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts after which he traveled widely devoting his time to open-air painting.

When he came to Dachau in 1893(-1899), the landscape there, in particular the fens had a pivotal effect on him. He changed his style and developed a new method of painting with temperas enabling him to record the fine nuances of colour in nature. His paintings of fen landscapes, which became his quintessential works, are principally of stretches of water and trees.

Ludwig Dill is considered to be the discoverer of the beauty of the Dachau fenland.
Works by Dill can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Dachau.
 

She was born into an upper class Jewish family and studied first at Adolf Meyer's private school of painting in Berlin. There she met Ida Kerkovius, a pupil of Adolf Hölzel in Dachau, and decided to study there too. In 1908 she married Hans Hildebrandt in Munich. In 1913 she moved to Stuttgart, where she became a master-pupil of Adolf Hölzel at the Stuttgart Academy of Art. There she met Walter Gropius.
 

Dachau artist, plein air painter Adolf Hölzel around the year 1930. Photo: Adolf Hölzel Stiftung, repro from catalogue, Zweckverband Dachauer Galerien und Museen

Adolf Hölzel began his studies at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts going on to the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

He developed a passion for open air painting after being inspired by Monet’s work during a visit to Paris with his friend Arthur Langhammer.

While living in Dachau between 1887 and 1906, he set up the Hölzel, the first Dachau school of fine arts. The school attracted many artists, often from far away, wanting to be taught by Hölzel. At this time he was in close contact with Dill and Langhammer and it was while in Dachau that he made the transition from realism to abstraction.

Works by Hölzel can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Dachau.

 

Arthur Langhammer, Fotografie des Künstlers

Arthur Langhammer studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig and thereafter in Munich until 1882.

He initially earned his living as an illustrator intending to live in the country at a later stage and there to devote his time to painting.

Having spent some time in Paris with his friend Adolf Hölzel, he visited Dachau, often staying for weeks at a time but didn’t finally settle there until 1900. It was here that he painted the local landscape integrating peasant figures, who for him represented nature. His instinct for poetry is also visible, found in his paintings interpreting themes of fabulous myth and legend.

Works by Langhammer can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Dachau.

Jean Lehmann, self-portrait 1922, photo: reproduction museum association Dachau

In accordance with his parents' wishes, he first trained as a hotel manager. Then he studied at the College of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule ) in Lucerne, from 1907 at the Accademia di belle arti di Venezia, moving in 1910 to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich to study with Julius Diez among others. From 1912 to 1922 he lived with his family in St. Moritz. They subsequently settled in Augustenfeld (Rothschwaige). Shortly afterwards he joined the ›Künstlergruppe Dachau‹ [Dachau Artists' Group] and exhibited his paintings in Dachau Palace as well as in the Glass Palace in Munich. When the Munich Glass Palace burnt down on 6 July 1931 works of Jean Lehmann were among those that fell victim to the flames. He remained closely attached to the country of his birth. He frequently visited St. Moritz and returned to live in Zürich in 1936.

Photo of painter Eduard Schleich d. Ä., ca. 1860, photo: F. Hanfstaengl

Having briefly studied history painting at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts he was exmatriculated on grounds of utter lack of talent and continued to educate himself autodidactically.

Together with Carl Spitzweg, Dietrich Langko, Christian Morgenstern and Friedrich Voltz he undertook many walking tours, which brought him to Italy, Prague, Paris and as far as London. He is regarded as the discoverer of the upper Bavarian landscape and in the 1850/60s he repeatedly visited the moor landscape near Dachau.

His landscape paintings are full of atmosphere and had a considerable impact on successive generations of painters.
 

Karl Schröder-Tapiau, Fotografie schwarz weiß mit Dachauer Stadtansicht im Hintergrund

At first he attended the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts in Königsberg. From there he travelled to Memel and Russia. In 1892 he studied at the Academy of Art in Karlsruhe among others with Ferdinand von Keller, whose master-pupil he became. In 1897 he took classes with Heinrich von Zügel at the Academy of Art in Munich. In 1911 he moved to Dachau, and returned there after the end of the first world war. In the early 1920s he studied woodcut technique with Carl Thiemann. In 1940 he left Dachau and returned to Munich.

As the son of a carpenter he was first apprenticed to his father, but then joined a travelling theatre troupe, as a member of which he performed all over the country. On 5 April 1875 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich for the antiquity class of Carl von Pilotys. He soon left the Academy, travelling once again around the country. He finally settled in Etzenhausen in 1890. There he became friends with the painters Adolf Ziegenmeyer, Wilhelm Velten and Georg Flad.

Otto Strützel, Fotografie des Künstlers beim Malen, Reproduktion Zweckverband Dachauer Galerien und Museen

Otto Strützel first attended the College of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Leipzig before going to the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in 1879. He visited the artists' colony of Willingshausen in Schwalm (West Hesse). From Munich, where he had taken up residence in 1885, he frequently travelled to France, Denmark and Sweden to pursue his studies. From 1883 he repeatedly came to the Dachau artists' colony during the summer months. When the Glass Palace in München was burnt down in 1931, 61 paintings of his which were being exhibited there were destroyed.

Carl Thiemann, schwarz/weiß-Portrait des Künstlers, Reproduktion Zweckverband Dachauer Galerien und Museen, Fotograf: Marian

Carl Thiemann was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1905.
To begin with he was engrossed with etching, but became increasingly fascinated by coloured wood cuts soon becoming a member of the leading group of modern wood engravers.

His father Adolph was a well-known art collector through whom he got to know the painters of the Barbizon School. He completed his studies of the history of art in Leipzig, Heidelberg and Berlin with a doctoral thesis on Tiepolo. Before his viva voce he decided to take up painting and in 1883 embarked on his studies at the Academy of Art in Munich. From 1890 he often stayed in Dachau. In 1896 he moved to Starnberg.
 

Black and white photograph of the artist Paula Wimmer, reproduction

Paula Wimmer began her training with Karl Becker-Gundahl at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

She then traveled to Rome, Florence, Venice and Paris. After returning to Munich she became a student of Max Feldbauer at his private school of fine arts in Dachau. Paula Wimmer later abandoned the impressionistic style of painting she had learned there.

She moved to Dachau in 1916, where she primarily worked with tempera in an experimental expressionist style. Her art was considered to be “degenerate” by the Nazis which was why she switched to a naïve style used to depict uncontroversial subjects. Her pictures express her joie de vivre, they depict her observations in a naïve form and their composition is well-considered. She is a figure central to Dachau art.

Works by Wimmer can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Dachau.