18.09.1894–29.12.1930
Nico Klopp
Nico Klopp grew up in the wine-growing canton of Remich on the Moselle and spent his short life painting the river, above all the bridge at Remich. In 1927, together with Joseph Kutter and others, he left the Cercle artistique de Luxembourg and became one of the founders of the Salon de la Sécession. He also made woodcuts and linocuts, and earned his living working for the local commune.
Biography
Nico Klopp painted the bridge over the Moselle at Remich so often that in 1975 the Luxembourg post office issued a four-franc stamp with this subject. By then the artist had been dead for forty-five years.
He was born on 18 September 1894 in Bech-Kleinmacher, on the Moselle in south-eastern Luxembourg, into a winegrowing family. He grew up in the canton of Remich. His parents died early; after their deaths, as his biographers write, he felt free to take up art. First he completed the Arts and Crafts School in Luxembourg City. He continued his art education abroad: in Cologne (1916–1918) and Weimar (1919–1920), and by some accounts also in Düsseldorf. There he studied portraiture and drawing from the nude. There, too, he found that painting was joined by another pull, towards printmaking, above all woodcut and linocut.
Art alone could not support him. From 1923 Klopp worked as a municipal official for the commune of Remich, from time to time taught sign language in schools, and on the side, so it is said, bred puppies. He settled in Remich.
In the second half of the 1920s he was among those Luxembourg artists who turned away from both the legacy of the nineteenth century and the Impressionists; their points of reference were Van Gogh and Cézanne. In 1927 Klopp, together with Joseph Kutter, Claus Cito, Harry Rabinger and others, left the Cercle artistique de Luxembourg, which they found too rigid. Their models were the secessions in Munich, Vienna and Berlin. The group founded the Salon de la Sécession in Luxembourg, which ran from 1927 to 1930. Klopp painted views of the Moselle and returned many times to the bridge at Remich. Besides landscapes there are still lifes, and flowers, especially tulips, are named among his favourite subjects. His landscapes and still lifes are distinguished by bright colour and a solid, firm stroke that brings out the main subject. To my mind, these are the qualities by which he is recognised at once, even in small works. His work was shown at exhibitions and salons in Luxembourg, Trier, Nancy, Bruges and Echternach.
He died in Luxembourg City on 29 December 1930, aged thirty-six. Some of his works are held by the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg. A street in Bech-Kleinmacher, where his family farmstead stands, a square in Remich and a street in the Limpertsberg district of Luxembourg City are named after him.
Profile notes