Description
Germany III Reich.
Portrait of Adolf Hitler.
Poster drawn by Eugen Denzel with the motto Dem Führer die Treue! held in 1935 for the Saarland referendum.
Printed by Mühlmeister & Johler Hamburg.
Format 70 x 100 cm.
Original from the III Reich period.
Eugen Denzel (born February 10, 1901 in Wuppertal. Died November 9, 1980 in Hamburg was a German painter, graphic artist, and newspaper illustrator.
While making a living in mining, he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art and also learned from Ludwig Fahrenkrog, Schlottke and Bäumler at the Wuppertal-Barmen school of applied arts. In 1920 he attended the Copenhagen Academy of Art for a time.
As a professional painter, he initially worked for clients of the steel industry in the Ruhr area until 1924. In 1924 he settled in Hamburg. Following his political orientation as a socialist, he worked there as a press illustrator for the Hamburger Echo until 1930.
From 1933 on he devoted himself mainly to portrait painting, but accepted the system and created works such as the port of Hamburg, shipyard work and the launch of the Gustloff during the Nazi era. Portraits of Adolf Hitler were also among the works commissioned from him. Many images have been lost due to the effects of the war.
After the war, he regularly made portrait drawings for the Lübecker Nachrichten, the Hamburger Abendblatt and the Bild-Zeitung. In addition to teaching temporarily at the University of Hamburg, he painted commissioned portraits (Haile Selassie (last Ethiopian Emperor), Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Empress Soraya, Theodor Heuss, Max Schmeling, Max Brauer) and landscape paintings.
He remained attached to traditional (representative) painting throughout his life. He harbored much skepticism towards his contemporaries since Picasso. The failure of 1966, when he lost to Oskar Kokoschka the commission by the German Bundestag with the portrait of Konrad Adenauer, seriously affected him.
