Karl Ewald Olszewski – Wikipedia

Karl Ewald Olszewski (Born January 25, 1884 in Czernowitz; then Austria-Hungary, today Ukraine, † February 24, 1965 in Munich) was a German painter.

Karl Ewald Olszewski (i.e. Olschewski) was the thirteenth of fourteen children. His father Karl was a respected master craftsman who first learned the profession of a blacksmith and later manufactured old Austrian post -covers in his large workshop, which he also painted with various coat of arms and landscapes. Before Karl Ewald’s birth, the family lived in Wiznitz, 80 kilometers west of Czernowitz on the Tscheremosch river, where his father was also mayor.

Painting the post -covers certainly has a formative positive influence on the growing boy. However, his brother Anton Olszewski, who was also 20 years older, had the largest proportion of his artistic development, who also wanted to become a painter, but then recorded the career of a forest official. He recognized the artistic disposition of his brother for drawing and painting at an early stage and promoted him in every conceivable way.

So he first enabled him to study at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and brought him to Munich in 1904, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with the Professors Ludwig von Herterich and Hugo von Habermann. This training followed further studies in Paris. In his early days, i.e. before the academy in Munich, Karl Ewald was particularly busy, worked for the Simplicissimus and dealt with portrait painting, with his mother Karoline (born Kandl) and his niece Margarethe Lehner, born Olszewski ( Daughter of the brother Anton Olszewski) preferred models.

The fact that Olszewski was particularly remembered as a “bird painter” has his reason in a decision that he described himself:

“I became a painter. When I moved my field of work north, I came to Mecklenburg for the first time. The infinite level with its gentle hills, with its wonderful air moods, their thousand lakes and last but not least with their wonderful Baltic Sea coast put me in silent enthusiasm. And the beauty of Mecklenburg grabbed the strings of my memory like a delicate hand and vibrated my soul. Since that time I have long been long after the moment when, like the migratory bird, I can move north to the north, to linger there for months, to take my studies there for my pictures to healthy and me To delight the silent beauty of this piece of earth blessed by God. ”

Karl Ewald Olszewski liked to stay on the Fischland-Darß peninsula, which is located on the southern Baltic Sea coast near the city of Ribnitz-Damgarten. Here he was able to fully develop his love and nature love from early childhood. He found different landscapes here, populated with storks, sea eagles and swamp snaps, humps and wild geese, seagulls and herons, ducks and crows, which have now become his exclusive motifs. In order to grasp the life of these birds, their behavior and manifestations as a whole in the entirety of all essential and typically visible peculiarities, he spent a few months on the Baltic Sea for thirty years. What he observed, studied, felt and outlined there is reflected in his pictures. It is the perfect harmony in the interaction of air, water, earth and light with the feathered creatures. His style is so striking and characteristic, his picturesque brush tour so pronounced that he cannot be confused with any other painter.

But he also knew about the value of the satire. When the Struwwelpeter appeared as “Swollen-Headed William” in London on October 1, 1914, an extremely successful English-language parody that experienced three editions within a week, but behind which a peppered anti-German war propaganda was hidden, Germany reacted in the same way: 1915 the “War Struwwelpeter” by Karl Ewald Olszewski. On a total of 24 sheets, the Entente powers became the subject of the caricature and mocking verses. Today this band is a sought -after collector’s item.

The successes did not fail to materialize. Olszewskis were represented in the Munich glass palace and in many other exhibitions. In particular, the Munich Hanfstaengl-Verlag, with its color light prints, contributed very to the global spread of Olszewski’s pictures.
At the beginning of the 1930s, the Royal Society for Art in London Karl Ewald Olszewski appointed a member (“Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts”).

At the international hunting exhibitions both in 1937 in Berlin and 1954 in Düsseldorf, Karl Ewald Olszewski was awarded a golden art medal.
In particular, he maintained watercolor painting, which had helped him to make his big breakthrough. Painting in oil, the etching and the pencil drawing were not neglected, but took a back seat.

Karl Ewald Olszewski worked in many artists’ associations. Renowned galleries have acquired his pictures. The municipal gallery in Munich, the Bavarian State Painting Collections and the State Museum Schwerin have works from him.

Olszewski was probably suffering from the National Socialists. From 1938 to 1944 he was represented at all major art exhibitions in Munich, almost exclusively with atmospheric pictures with seabirds. Pictures of him were in the art Art to the people Published by the Hitler confidante and photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. ^[first] For Adolf Hitler, Olszewski took over the equipment of several rooms on his yacht Aviso Grille. ^[2] His picture “with wind and clouds” hung in the salon of the ship; Today it is privately owned.

For 1945, Schwerin is occupied as a residence of Olszewski. There he took part in the “Annual Show in 1945 of the artists from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania” with ten pictures. ^[3]

Karl Ewald Olszewski was married to the opera singer Lite Thomasius-Olszewski from Alsace. The daughter Yvonne and the son Reinhold Kurt Olszewski come from this marriage, who was the initiator, director, actor and organizer of the “German Chamber Games”, who initially had their seat in Santiago de Chile, later in Buenos Aires and under his leadership the leading German cultural bearers in South America.

• Wild geese in the emerging storm. Oil on cardboard [73.5 × 103 cm], in 1939 in the existence of the municipal gallery in Munich
• The sea eagle comes. Watercolor [35.5 × 48.5 cm]; Städtische Galerie in Munich, acquired in 1929 in the Glaspalast
• Invoice broke birds. Oil on canvas [36.5 × 49.2 cm]; Bavarian State Painting Collections
• Heaf swans above the Haffwinkel (panel picture, oil; exhibited in 1943 at the great German art exhibition)
• Sea bank with 14 flying wild geese. Oil on canvas; State Museum Schwerin
• With wind and clouds. Private ownership

• Reinhold black: Pictures of a bird painter. In: Czernowitzer small writings , Heft 21, Innsbruck 2008
• Hans Prelitsch: A master of animal painting. In: The Southeast German , No. 2/1954, p. 3
• Mecklenburg monthly booklets , 11. Jg. 1935, Heft 8, S. 425
• Karl Ewald Olszewski: The war struwwelpeter. Holbein-Verlag, Munich 1915

1. ↑ So the picture “Wildgänse in the emerging storm” in No. 6/1943.
2. ↑ Mortimer G. Davidson: Art in Germany 1933–1945, Volume II/1, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-87847–095-9, p. 12
3. ↑ Dresden wedding: Annual show 1945. Accessed on October 12, 2021 (German).