Alexander Mohr - Life and Work

Life and Work

Alexander Mohr was born in Frankenberg, Germany, to affluent parents who hailed from an aristocratic background. Mohr commenced his formal artistic instruction in 1905 in Koblenz, Germany under the tutelage of German expressionist William Straube (1871–1954), who was a student of Henri Matisse. His formal training was interrupted by World War I where he served as a Calvary Officer from 1914 to 1918 in the war's eastern front.

The war behind him, in 1919 Mohr studied under expressionist Adolf Holzel (1853–1934) in Stuttgart and executed his works in the circle of the Rhenish Expressionists in Düsseldorf.

In 1919 he illustrated a book for famed German expressionist writer Carl Maria Weber and later rendered avant-garde illustrations for other publications. Commencing in 1920 Mohr began a lifelong friendship with the French-German writer Joseph Breitbach (1903–1980).

In 1922 Mohr participated in the First International Art Exhibition in Düsseldorf. Later that year Mohr transitioned to Berlin where he became a member of the expressionist November Group and developed an acquaintance with art-handlers Alfred Flechtheim and Wilhelm Uhde.

From 1925 to 1931 Mohr both studied and worked in Paris with three one-man exhibitions in 1927, 1929 and 1930. Through his acquaintance with expressionist Max Jacob, Mohr gained access to Pablo Picasso, with further references from his author friend Joseph Breitbach. While in Paris, Mohr was comfortable and frequently seen with the bon vivant literary elite of Paris, including Jean Schlumberger, André Gide and Julien Green.

Many believe that Mohr's finest expressionist paintings were executed during his Paris years and represented bucolic, mythological scenes influenced by the writings of Virgil, Horace and Ovid as the three canonical poets of Latin literature.

On occasion during 1925 to 1930 Mohr journeyed to Hungary, Spain, Italy and Switzerland to advance his expressionist agenda. In 1932 Mohr visited Greece where he met and married Elsa Kahn, who would remain his lifelong partner. (Elsa's uncle was investment banker Otto Kahn (1867–1934) who built a 127-room mansion on Long Island, the second largest private residence in the U.S., after George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.)

For the next decade Mohr worked mostly in Germany, favoring his family homes in Trier and also Merzig, but also with frequent stays in Paris and Greece, inclusive of exhibitions in both Germany and Greece. His last one-man exhibition in Paris was in 1939 as the rumblings of World War II became louder. Mohr recognized the signs of conflict and opted to reside in Greece from 1942 to 1949.

From the mid-1930s Mohr's artistic style migrated from expressionism to a more abstract form of the German expressionist movement, albeit some characterize this period as a transition to cubism by Mohr. While both expressionism and cubism are forms of modern art, cubism is based much less on the expression of emotion than it is on an intellectual experiment with structure and few would argue that emotion is lacking in Mohr's works. His paintings exude expressive emotion and are executed with quintessential German exactitude. Mohr was a wizard in catching an expression as elusive as thought. A master of expressionist painting, Mohr latched on to the brash and angular. We can only imagine Mohr propped on his studio stool, well-groomed yet smug as he lays evanescent highlights onto the impastic background of the canvas of his early expressionistic work and on another occasion wondering if we will identify the blended nuances, all but hidden, in his later abstract expressionist works.

From 1950 to 1953 Mohr once again migrated to Paris and worked from a studio provided by the Schlumberger family and remained in close contact with his friend Joseph Breitbach.

Beginning in the mid-1950s Mohr resumed his peripatetic travel rhythm and his lifelong expressionist painting passion became a more casual endeavor. On February 8, 1974 expressionist painter Alexander Mohr succumbed to death after a short illness in Athens, Greece and was interred there as well.

Several retrospective exhibitions of the work of Alexander Mohr were held in decades following his demise. His life is described in Alexander Mohr–Der Maler mit den Flügelschuhen a 410 page illustrated monograph written by Christl Lehnert-Leven and published in 1996 in Germany.

While Mohr's exhibition listing is extensive, the artist neither sought nor received much notoriety outside his native Germany and his adopted Greece.