Co-founder of the Secession

It once belonged to the painter Josef Block.

Block moves to Munich as a young man in 1881. He was originally from Silesia, began to study art in Breslau (Wrocław) and continued his studies at the Kunstakademie (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich.

One of his tutors is Bruno Piglhein, a painter of historical scenes. Piglhein arranges a prestigious job for his student: Block is allowed to contribute to Piglhein’s monumental panorama Jerusalem am Tag der Kreuzigung Christi (Jerusalem on the Day of the Day of Christ’s Crucifixion). The panorama, which went on display for the first time in 1886 in Munich, was destroyed in a fire in Vienna in 1892.

Josef Block sets up a studio at 75 Theresienstraße. This part of Munich – around the neighborhoods of Maxvorstadt and Schwabing – has a population largely made up of artists, students, and academics. Josef Block lives in the same building as two other painters, Fritz von Uhde and Ludwig Dill.

It was in this studio that on 4 April 1892 Block and 95 fellow artists found the „Verein bildender Künstler Münchens e.V.” (Munich Association of Visual Artists), which later becomes famous as the „Secession”. This group considers itself the antithesis of the established art scene in Munich, which is dominated by the portraitist Franz von Lenbach. The co-founders of the Secession are Block’s professor Bruno Piglhein and the “prince of painting” Franz von Stuck. Author Margarete Mauthner recalls the foundation of the movement: „Secession? – The word meant nothing to me; it was an alien concept. But when I heard the names of those behind the movement, it all became clear: light, freedom, purity in art, even when it did not follow an entirely new direction, death to the studio tone, kitsch, and falsity…”

He marries Else Oppenheim, the daughter of the banker Hugo Otto Oppenheim and his wife Margarete, née Mendelssohn. The couple soon adds to their family with the birth of Anna Luise, Hugo, and Otto. They are soon to be deprived of their family happiness, as Else suffers from severe depression and has to be admitted to an institution around 1903.

Josef Block becomes firmly established in the art world of Berlin, as he had been in Munich. He is friends with Max Slevogt, Emil Orlik, and Max Liebermann and becomes a sought-after portrait artist in high society. Prominent art dealers such as Fritz Gurlitt and Paul Cassirer sell his works and he often takes part in the Biennale in Venice and Secession exhibitions.

In 1904 the women’s illustrated magazine "Berliner Leben – Zeitschrift für Schönheit und Kunst" (Berlin Life – Magazine for Beauty and Art) writes: “The artist is at the center of his works; he has a calm and self-assured gaze. A renowned painter who has a very good name in the art world. Here you can see Die Versuchung des heiligen Antonius (The Temptation of Saint Antony), underneath it Spanierin (Spanish Woman), above this to the right another picture of a Spanish woman, and below that Dame im Grünen (Woman in the Greenery); in addition, the Grablegung Christi (Burial of Christ) and Chansonette (Little Song).”

Block has a longstanding friendship with the writer Gerhart Hauptmann, whom he has known since his time in Breslau. Block often visits Hauptmann on the Baltic Sea island of Hiddensee and in the Giant Mountains. He produces a series of portraits of Hauptmann during this period.

Block is a keen and frequent traveler. Around the turn of the century, he embarks on a grand tour of the Mediterranean, which took him as far as Egypt. In the 1920s he often visits Italy, Switzerland, and France. He always has his camera with him – he is a fan of the new artistic medium of photography.

Around 1906 Block inherits a collection of Old Masters paintings from his uncle, the Berlin lawyer Berthold Richter. The paintings are so famous and so valuable that in 1919 leading representatives of the museums in Berlin such as Wilhelm von Bode want to include them in an inventory of national treasures.

From the late 1920s Josef Block lives in a large apartment at Derfflingerstraße in Berlin-Tiergarten.

„Mr Block’s apartment was like a museum”, recalls his housekeeper, Gertrud Lessow. „There were pieces of genuine period furniture, the precious rugs were literally laid one on top of the other. The series of high-ceilinged rooms which had no connecting doors were full of valuable porcelain, sculptures, pictures, bronzes…”