Johann Walter-Kurau

Biography

Walter’s first major picture, his diploma work “At the Market”, is dated 1897. Its subject comes from the town life of Mitau, which he had known since childhood.

He was born on 3 February 1869 in Mitau (now Jelgava), the son of the merchant and town councillor Teodors Valters and his wife Catharina, née Kurau. His mother came from the Baltic Germans, and through her he held German citizenship. There were five children in the family.

From 1880 to 1888 he attended secondary school in Mitau, where the drawing teacher was Kurt Vīsners. At the same time he went to the studio of the painter Julius Döring and took violin lessons. Music stayed with him for a long time: its trace is seen in his painting.

In 1889 Walter entered the Higher Art School of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. He studied under Alexei Kivshenko and Vladimir Makovsky. In 1897 he received the degree of painter for his diploma work “At the Market”. During his academy years he belonged to the circle of Latvian artists “Rūķis” (“The Gnome”). According to some accounts he became its leader in 1892, and in 1896 he took part in the first joint exhibition of Latvian artists in Riga. From 1894 he showed work in exhibitions in St Petersburg, Mitau and Riga.

After the academy Walter returned to Mitau. He painted a great deal, taught, and gave lectures on art at the Mitau Artisans’ Society. Until 1906 he ran a private studio where future well-known artists studied, among them Ģederts Eliass and Sigismunds Vidbergs. Together with Vilhelms Purvītis he organised an exhibition in Mitau. In 1901 he showed about a hundred works in Riga; critics received the exhibition coolly and reproached him for its lack of focus. His exhibitions in Germany and Russia were received better. Town scenes and peasant types date from these years: “Peasant Girl” (about 1905), while “Bathing Boys” (1900) became one of his best-known works in Latvia.

In 1906 he left Latvia for good. His parents were no longer alive, and the country had been shaken by the Revolution of 1905. Other reasons are also given: a divorce from his wife and the hostility of those around him, which is linked to a petition concerning Walter and Purvītis; the circumstances of that affair remain unclear. The painter Baron Paul von Schlippenbach invited him to stay, and Walter settled in Dresden. His last realist work tied to his homeland is held to be “The Orphan” (1907).

In Germany he began signing his pictures with the double surname “Walter-Kurau”. Dresden in those years was the city of the group Die Brücke (The Bridge), and Walter entered that milieu with enthusiasm; an influence from Kandinsky’s Blue Rider is also mentioned. Scenes from theatre life and Expressionist landscapes appeared. He experimented a great deal, gradually giving up the building of space through light and shade in favour of a free rhythm of colour and line. Many speak of a move towards abstraction, but in my view it is hard to judge this from the few reproductions.

From Dresden Walter moved to Berlin: in 1912 by some accounts, in 1916–1917 by others. His German pupils included Hans Zank, Willi Gericke, Ilse Heller-Lazard, Eva Langkammer, Else Lohmann and Minna Köhler-Roeber. Otto von Kursell later became head of the Berlin Academy of Arts.

Walter died in Berlin on 19 December 1932. More than 120 of his works are held by the Latvian National Museum of Art, and there are others in the museums of Kuldīga and Tukums. In 2019 Latvian Post issued a stamp block devoted to the artist.