The Erdinger heritage of the Chiemsee painter

Created: 01/14/2022, 08:00

By: Gabi Zierz

Winter landscape is the name of this work by Johann Georg Schlech with oil on canvas, which was created around 1940.

© Museum Franz Xaver Stahl, Erding

Erding - He is considered one of the leading Chiemsee painters: Johann Georg Schlech.

However, his estate is kept in Erding.

He was born in Munich, but his estate is kept in Erding: Johann Georg Schlech (1899-1952).

This Friday marks the 70th anniversary of the painter's death.

His entire artistic and private legacy is housed in the Franz Xaver Stahl Museum on Landshuter Strasse.

Because Schlech was the first husband of Stahl's widow Margarete.

Museum director Heike Kronseder, who has a doctorate in art history, remembers.

Schlech was born in 1899 as the son of a family of hoteliers on the Bavariaring. After schooling at the strict Fürstenstein boys' boarding school and attending commercial and district secondary school, he was drafted at the age of just 16. He was shot down twice as a passenger during World War I and suffered from the consequences of his serious injuries throughout his life.

Schlech graduated from high school in 1919 and began studying animal painting at the Munich Art Academy.

He didn't want to follow in his parents' footsteps.

The famous animal painter and art professor Heinrich von Zügel accepted him into his class.

There Schorschi, as everyone called him, met art students with whom he was to maintain a lifelong friendship, including Franz Xaver Stahl, who was born in Erding.

The student days in Munich in the 1920s were good times.

"Life at the academy was colorful and exciting," Schlech emphasized again and again.

People met to paint and discuss together, went on trips and painting trips, celebrated together.

Got it well: the students of the animal painting class with Johann Georg Schlech (r.).

© Museum Franz Xaver Stahl, Erding

After graduating, Schlech had a small apartment with a studio on Goethestrasse. For the increasing number of orders and work, for example as an advertising artist for the Fiat company or many commercial graphics, he needed help in the office and simple artistic work. He found this in the young artisan Margarete Gruber. The two also got together privately. In 1936 they married.

Johann Georg Schlech was a sociable person, enjoyed entertaining guests and making music with artist friends. He was also a prolific painter, taking part in exhibitions, creating illustrations for magazines and serving collectors. In 1938, Schlech took part in the Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art. "He never joined the NSDAP, but submitted paintings to the exhibition in 1938, 1940, 1943 and 1944," emphasizes Kronseder.

In 1938 the Schlech couple also moved to Lake Chiemsee. There the animal painter changed his subject after an eye operation. As a thank you for being "allowed to see" he painted the Chiemsee area, landscapes, wooded areas and mountains in all seasons and advanced to become one of the leading Chiemsee painters. After the Second World War, the first art exhibition in occupied Germany took place in Prien. "It is thanks to the courage and initiative of the artists involved that paintings, graphics, ceramics and sculptures could be shown in 14 rooms at the time," Schlech's wife Margarete later reported. Her husband participated in this exhibition with 13 oil paintings.

Schlech died on January 14, 1952 at the age of only 52. He was buried in Prien am Chiemsee. "His large artistic estate mainly shows paintings and drawings full of impressions of Bavarian landscapes that are hardly known any more," describes Kronseder: "Lonely paths, wild vegetation, uneven streams, half-ruined turf huts, carts drawn by oxen and horses, Heumandl, colorful orchards full of old varieties and many other details of a typical Bavarian landscape, lovingly observed and captured on the canvas.”

All of these works are in Erding because Margarete Schlech married his friend and fellow painter Stahl eleven years after the death of her first husband.

Schlech's works are shown in four rooms in his former home and studio.

The next museum Sunday is February 6th from 2pm to 5pm.

The current Corona rules apply.