Richard Lindner (painter)

Richard Lindner (November 11, 1901 –April 16, 1978) was a German-American painter.

Biography

Richard Lindner was born in Hamburg. His mother Mina Lindner was American and born in New York as daughter of German parents. 1905 the family moves to Nuremberg, where Lindners mother was owner of a custom-fitting corset business and Richard Lindner grew up and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School). From 1924 to 1927 he lived in Munich and studied there from 1925 at the Kunstakademie. 1927 he moved to Berlin and stayed there until 1928 when he returned to Munich to become art director of a publishing firm. He remained there until 1933 when he was forced to flee to Paris, where he became politically engaged, sought contact with French artists and earned his living as a commercial artist. He was interned when the war broke out in 1939 and later served in the French Army. In 1941 he went to the United States and worked in New York City as an illustrator of books and magazines and made contact with New York artists and German emigrants (Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Saul Steinberg). In 1948 he became an American citizen. From 1952 he taught at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1967 at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven. 1957 Lindner got the William and Norma Copley Foundation-Award. In 1965 he became Guest Professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. His paintings at this time used the sexual symbolism of advertising and investigated definitions of gender roles in the media. Richard Lindner died in 1978.

Art

Richard Lindner is one of the famous painters of the 20th century."The artistic universe of Richard Lindner is unique: he is highly genuine, he is full of urban energy, and he is driven by weird eroticism...Richard Lindner started his career as an artist eventually at the age of 40 in New York. In this metropolitain jungle Lindner created his OEvre: exciting and powerful images of robot like figures, amazones and heroines, harlequinades of self-styled heroes- his artistic panorama of the unruly 60s an 70s of the 20th century." (Claus Clement quoted in: Richard Lindner - Paintings, Works on Paper, Graphic - Nuremberg 2001). One of Lindner's Paintings, "Boy With Machine," 1954, appears on the cover-leaf of Deleuze's "Anti-Oedipus", and thus the image has formed part of many readers' introduction to Deleuze's later and more accessible philosophy.

(selected) Bibliography

* "Richard Lindner - Paintings, works on paper, graphic", edited by Klaus D. Bode, Nuremberg 2001, ISBN 3-934065-07-4
* Ashton Dore, "Richard Lindner", New York, 1969
* Dienst, Rolf Gunter, "Richard Lindner", New York 1969
* Tillim, Sidney, "Lindner", London 1961