“The more one can explain into a picture, the less the painter has managed to clearly express his intention. The work must speak for itself! [...] The good paintings are clear and unambiguous and do not need explanations, but they demand a confession.”
Important Works by Josef Scharl from the Collection of Dr. Gerda and Dr. Manfred Liebermann
ABOUT THE COLLECTOR
The art collection of Dr. Gerda and Dr. Manfred Liebermann, the grandson of the Berlin industrialist Georg Liebermann and the great-nephew of the painter Max Liebermann, includes four important paintings and three fine drawings by the Munich painter Josef Scharl.
Manfred Liebermann, like his later wife Gerda, was born in Berlin in the 1920s. As part of a large family he grew up in Berlin Wilmersdorf and Berlin Tiergarten, also in constant contact with his uncle Max Liebermann and his wife Martha. The love of art and culture was in his blood, yet he decides to study medicine in Berlin. There he met his wife and together they decided to live and work in Hamburg after graduation. They opened their medical practice in the Hanseatic city and moved into a villa on the Alster river.
They furnished their home with great taste for 1960s architecture and design, focusing on simple forms. In addition to their professional connections, the couple's interest in art and culture also unites them in their private lives. They look for works of art that fit into their interiors, but also enrich them. They enthusiastically discover the works of the painter Josef Scharl, who is introduced to them by a friend of the Liebermann family, the physician and collector Prof. Dr. Aloys Greither from Munich. The couple's enthusiasm for this artist manifested itself clearly when one looked through their collection, the works of Josef Scharl forming the main focus.
Manfred Liebermann preferred the painter's early portraits because he was impressed by their power of depiction, especially how skillfully Josef Scharl was able to reflect the suffering of war and the emotional worlds of people with so few details. As he himself suffered from the consequences of the difficult and cruel experiences of the Second World War, he felt particularly strongly drawn to these works.
Gerda Liebermann studied medicine after training as a medical-technical assistant and has held her own throughout her life in an industry dominated by men. With her charming and elegant manner, she cultivated an open house in her villa on the banks of the Alster with lively discussions in which she always clearly represented her point of view as an emancipated woman and repeatedly addressed the need for women's equality in society.
The collection of the doctor couple could be understood as a reflection of their taste and passion for collecting, but perhaps the secret of this exquisite art collection lies in the exact opposite and the works rather describe the personality of the collectors.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Josef Scharl began an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in Munich, which was not purely technical, but gave him a basic knowledge of anatomy, art history and restoration. At the age of 19 he was called as a soldier into the First World War. In 1918 he was seriously wounded with partial paralysis of his right arm, followed by a stay in hospital. While his arm was paralysed, he painted and drew with his left hand. Fortunately, the paralysis could be treated, and Josef Scharl began studying at the Academy of Art in Munich immediately after his recovery, but he left early and continued his studies autodidactically.
Scharl developed his own style of painting with strong, concise brushstrokes that fix a clear physicality in tight, dense layers. His division of the picture surface into dark and light sections has a literally graphic effect. Josef Scharl's oeuvre impresses with its expressiveness, which the artist achieves through his crystal-clear powers of observation as well as through rich colour palate, first monochrome, earthy and dark and later expressive, bright and colour-intensive. His portraits of the 1920s and 1930s in particular are avant-garde pictures, marked by his own signature, which lies between Expressionism and New Objectivity.
Josef Scharl was a positive, fun-loving person and, thanks to his extremely communicative nature, very well connected with artists at home and abroad, which might surprise the viewer given his early, rather sombre works. Thanks to a number of scholarships, he was able to go on study trips to Paris and Rome. As an autodidact, however, he always chose his own path and did not allow himself to be confined by overarching theories. This was his personal, avant-garde form of expression.
Together with Beckmann, Scholz, Heckel and Hofer, he accepted an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to take part in an international exhibition, which encouraged Scharl in his plans to emigrate.
In the early 1920s, the Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein and the painter Josef Scharl met in Berlin. A decade later, both the scientist and the painter no longer had a place in the world of the National Socialist in Germany. After the seizure of power in 1933, Einstein did not return to his homeland from a research stay in America. In 1938 Scharl followed and emigrated to the USA alone without his family, which also became a turning point in his palette, changing to brighter and stronger colours, and a stronger devotion to landscape and nature depictions.
To speed up his application for admission in the US, he asked Albert Einstein for help. The two friends maintained a lively exchange in the USA. Scharl drew and painted Einstein on several occasions and the two played music together. In 1944, Einstein even sat for an oil portrait. It shows the scholar in a manner typical of Scharl's painting style at the time. In contrast to earlier times, with the artists newly discovered use of bright colours, he also started emphasising the contours more strongly.
The bond between Scharl and Einstein lasted until the Scharl’s death in 1954. Einstein was too ill to attend Scharl's funeral in person. A deputy read out a eulogy to his deceased painter friend on his behalf. In it, he paid tribute to Scharl as an important artist-personality.
"Everything about him was genuine, original and unspoilt. He was never amenable to a weak compromise, neither as an artist nor as a human being."
During his lifetime, his work was closely associated with the Galerie Nierendorf, who continues to support his work with exhibitions to this day. In Germany, Scharl was closely associated with the Munich dermatologist and collector Prof. Dr. Aloys Greither. The latter held the memory of his art very dear and, according to the collector, was called a ‘Scharlomaniac’ in medical circles because of his such close ties.
In addition, many important works by the artist are in private and museum’s collections, the largest public Scharl collection held by Kunsthalle Emden.