His pictures sold for up to 20,000 euros: The Munich painter Maximilian Seitz († 83) died in a fire in his apartment in Sauerlach.
Munich -
He was one of
Munich's
streets
: the painter Maximilian Seitz († 83).
Always wearing a suit and a scarf, he strolled through the city and sat down in Schumann's bar or day bar almost every day.
He liked to have lunch with his friend and collector Karl Ederer, and he regularly stopped by the fashion designer and artist Susanne Wiebe, a friend with whom he repeatedly planned major art events and exhibitions, and they both had new ideas for this year too.
They had just phoned last Wednesday - it was supposed to be an exhibition in Salzburg.
But by then the hourglass of life was as good as over.
Maximilian Seitz died in the early hours of Friday in the flames of his attic apartment in the old town hall in Sauerlach
, which he had taken over from his parents and kept for life - next to the spacious studio in Tizianstrasse in Gern.
He recently shared the studio with his nephew Emanuel Seitz (47), who has already established himself as a painter and was happy to accept experience and knowledge from his uncle.
Painter from Munich dies in a fire: his large pictures cost between 15,000 and 20,000 euros
Maximilian Seitz originally learned the photography trade
;
After spending several months in Paris, he decided to paint and study at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with Jean-Jacques Deyrolle, which he graduated with a diploma in 1966 as a master class student.
The French school and strong Impressionist influences were not to let go of him either - the light and the shapes of Egypt and Greece in particular have inspired him throughout his life, he traveled there regularly and incorporated ornamentation into his works.
Like the great French painters, he lived as a painter prince - generously in a studio with a lot of charisma, where he used to like to hold court.
He always ate and drank out - if only because of communication.
Maximilian Seitz never sold below value, which he saw for large pictures between 15,000 and 20,000 euros, smaller ones at 3000 euros
.
He never needed a gallery owner, he kept it like the existentialists in France - in cafés and restaurants he personally cultivated the network of collectors and patrons - "with cast iron consistency", as companion Susanne Wiebe relates.
The fact that he was visibly calmer and sadder in his circles in the city of late - this was mainly due to the fact that five years ago his partner, the theater whore Trudi, died suddenly, his mainstay in life.
But Seitz himself also had health problems
- after a heart attack a few years ago and most recently a femoral neck fracture, from which he has recovered.
But the lockdown hit him far worse than any pain.
All connections suddenly cut!
The inspirations, the exchange, the personal conversation with the collectors.
With his creator, the unsold works are also burned
With his creator, the unsold works are also burned - almost all of them.
Except for a few in the studio in Munich.
The fire investigators are still investigating what exactly happened, and the corpse, which was burned beyond recognition, was autopsied.
It is a bitter irony that a fire led the painter into eternity, because Maximilian Seitz had always wanted a handsome burial - in the family grave at the Ostfriedhof, as his brother Willi Seitz, music teacher in Chiemgau, reports.
His wife Ingeborg, the aforementioned son Emanuel and the two nieces Felicitas (40) and Theresia (41) mourn with him.
The old town hall in Sauerlach was a school building until 1966 and the place of work of the father Willi Seitz sr., Who had been transferred there from Trostberg in 1939 as a teacher.
The Seitz family has been at home there ever since.
The damage to the building from 1876 is immense
and has not yet been quantified.
130 firefighters were on duty.
“Like a pharaoh, he took everything with him to death,” says Susanne Wiebe, who owns a number of large and small works by Maximilian Seitz.
The Christmas card that she received this year seems almost like a vision afterwards: there is a lot of red and yellow in front of the green of the festival.
Ulrike Schmidt - * tz.de is part of the Ippen network.
