Wallfahrt

Adolf Hoelzel, who had trained at the Academies in both Vienna and Munich in the 1870s, visited Paris in the 1880s where his style and technique underwent an immediate change due to the impact of the plein-air paintings of the impressionists. After his return to Germany, he settled in Dachau where he was a co-founder of the New Dachau School of Painting along with Ludwig Dill and Fritz von Uhde. From about 1907, his work became dominated by abstractions, based on religious scenes. This is the period into which Wallfahrt falls. Between 1906 and 1919, Hoelzel was Professor at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Knste in Stuttgart, where he was an extremely influential teacher to many young artists who included Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten. From 1910 to 1913, the period in which this work was painted, Hoelzel was concentrating mainly on his career as a teacher, rather than on his own painting, for which he was much criticised by his contemporaries. (W. Venzmer, Adolf Hlzel, Leben und Werk, Stuttgart 1982, p. 26). As Hermann Missenharter wrote in the Wrttembergische Zeitung of 4 March 1913: "Professor Hlzel spielt im Stuttgarter Kunstleben eine besondere Rolle. Er selbst tritt mit eigenen Werken nur selten hervor, umsomehr aber hrt und sieht man allenthalben von Hlzelschlern..."