Curt Liebich

Curt Liebich (1920s)

Laublehof (woman in a bollenhut, outside a traditional Black Forest house)

Curt Liebich (17 November 1868, Wesel - 12 December 1937, Gutach) was a German painter, graphic artist and sculptor.

Life and work

After some initial training in Dresden, he transferred to the Berlin University of the Arts. After 1890, he studied at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School, Weimar. There, he met the famous "Black Forest Painter", Wilhelm Hasemann.

In 1896, he married Hasemann's sister-in-law, Antonie Lichtenberg, and settled in Gutach; painting scenes of rural and village life. He also created postcard motifs that made the bollenhut (a formal headdress) and the Black Forest house familiar throughout the world. As an illustrator, he designed title pages for books and magazines as well as advertising graphics. Together with Hasemann, he established the Gutach artists' colony.

During and after World War I, he helped create several war memorials; in Dunningen, Laufenburg, Meissenheim, Rhina and Schapbach. In 1917, he was named a professor by Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden.

Antonie died in 1919. The following year, he married her younger sister, Emma. In 1923, he was named an honorary citizen of Gutach. In 1933, he designed the Gutacher honorary citizenship certificates for Robert Heinrich Wagner and Adolf Hitler.

The Kunstmuseum Hasemann-Liebich, featuring works by both artists, was opened in Gutach in 2005.

Further reading

• Ansgar Barth: Curt Liebich, ein Künstler in seiner Zeit, Gutach (Schwarzwaldbahn) 2018 ISBN 978-3-9815594-1-5
• Werner Liebich: Schwarzwaldmaler Curt Liebich 1868–1937, Haslach 1987
• Joachim Baumann, Peter Schäfer: Curt Liebich, Künstlerpostkarten, Schonach/Trossingen 2008

External links

• Kunstmuseum Hasemann-Liebich, website