Heinrich Kley, the illustrator behind The Alchemist and The Art of War, shares his story about how he became an artist.
Heinrich Kley is one of the most famous and prolific German artist and illustrators. He has produced a variety of children’s books and magazines and has received numerous awards for his illustrations.
The story behind the artist, Heinrich Kley
Heinrich Kley was born in 1883 and died in 1978. His illustration career started at age 13 when he first drew a cartoon for the German newspaper, Frankfurter Rundschau. From there, he went on to study illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His illustrations were so striking and well-executed that he quickly became one of Germany’s most famous illustrators.
He was well known for his artworks and illustrations on children’s books. Some of his paintings, which were influenced by the romantic movement in art, showed scenes from nature. He painted some of the earliest illustrations on the first English edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”. “Heinrich Kley’s early influence in art came from romantic realism and impressionism,” said that he created a series of works called The Dream of the North, which includes four large oil paintings on wood.
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Heinrich Kley – The Art of the Cartoonist
Heinrich Kley began studying the arts at Karlsruhe Academy and then continued with his education under the tutelage of studio artist C Fritjog Smith. Heinrich Kley began his career as a painter in Berlin. His early works were depictions of the history of painting as well as more traditional subject matter, such as landscapes, still lifes, and historical paintings.
He was hired by several large German industrial factories, including Rupp, MAN and Bilfinger. His detailed studies of machinery were described by a critic of the time as capturing “the poetry of the modern machine world.
A self-portrait of Heinrich Kley, a modernist artist from Berlin, Germany, who is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. The exhibit is called “The Century of the Self”. Besides Fantasia and Dumbo, Kley’s influence is most obvious in the dark demons of “Night on Bald Mountain” and dancing animals in “dance of the hours.” The mysteries of Kley’s personal life make him as fascinating as his work.
From the 1800s to the early 1900s, the art and design of Heinrich Kley had a dramatic shift towards the demonization of the factory and the progress of industrialization. What a paradoxical figure he is: the best painter in history and the artist who created a revolutionary new medium. And the medium is used almost exclusively by advertising executives today to sell the products they like.
When you look at her work, it’s easy to see his progression from an almost scientific study of the machine to a demonized human form destroying the factories of industrialization. The machine was one of the first pieces of art to use industrial methods to express the beauty of the machine.
Heinrich Kley – The Illustrator Behind Disney
The influence of Heinrich Kley on Walt Disney is undeniable. In 1935, Walt visited Europe extensively and brought back a handful of works by the German artist. Walt was inspired by the dramatic and emotional qualities of Kley’s art and wanted to capture that on-screen for his audience.
Heinrich Kley – The Illustrator Behind The Characters
German Expressionist art is the first World War and shifting political structures in Germany that spawned many avant-garde art movements. They had a lasting impression on the trajectory of art production. There is a snapshot of one of Heinrich Kley’s sketchbooks on display at The Walt Disney Family Museum.
After the First World War, German expressionism reached its peak. The movement extended through the fine arts, film and architecture and was fueled by the horror of the First World War.
Expressionism sought to show an inner reality as opposed to the academically accepted practice of realism. It was more important for Expressionists to portray the raw emotional experience of the artist in order to evoke a strong response in the viewer. Heinrich Kley creates work that depicts a sense of emotion through the musculature and the dark and frenzied lines that create a sense of urgency and movement in his work. The influence of German Expressionism on Heinrich Kley’s work stops there.
The Blue Reiter, a seminal Expressionist group established in Munich in 1908, was working in the same time and place as Kley, making him the first and only.
The group that focused more on the emotions and perceptions evoked by the use of simple colors was one of the group’s main artists, Kandinsky. Heinrich Kley was an illustrator and cartoonist who worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Kandinsky was interested in the emotion evoked by the use of simple color, as seen in his work. Heinrich Kley’s illustrations were more illustrative than emotional. His paintings were meant to darken the mood. The ending of Kley’s art exhibition provides the last shroud that hides the mysterious life of his art from the world
There is no evidence that Heinrich Kley was persecuted by the Third Reich, but the undercurrent of unrest, disillusionment, and a weary social system presents itself in his work. His work strongly opposes the socially accepted right wing conservative messages of might, militarism, human perfection, and cultural supremacy, which was propagated by the Third Reich.