Willy Jaeckel - Ets/Aquatint: Dante's Hell "The Griffined Comedy"

Etching/Aquatint by Willy Jaeckel. Title: Dante's Hell "Die Griffiede Komedie". Dimensions sheet: H35.5 x W28.5 cm. Dimensions image: H30.5 x w23 cm. The work is signed in pencil by the artist, lower right. The authenticity of the work offered is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.

Jaeckel's father was a public land manager, and he originally intended to become a forester, but ill health forced him to change his plans. [1] From 1906 to 1908 he studied at the art academy in Breslau, after which he enrolled at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, under Otto Gußmann [de], a decorative painter. In 1913 he moved to Berlin to work as a freelance artist and became a member of the Berlin Secession in 1915. Four years later he was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and became a teacher at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1925. [1]

His first successful painting was "Kampf" (Battle or Fight), a large canvas with a roaring, muscular, naked man. In 1928 he received the "Georg-Schlicht-Preis" for the "most beautiful portrait of a German woman". [2]

He was appointed associate professor in 1933, but was dismissed when the Nazis came to power. His students protested and he was eventually reinstated. This victory was short-lived, however. Those who took classes from him were unlikely to graduate, and in 1937 some of his works were officially classified as "degenerate".[1] In response, he painted "Ploughman in the Evening" (1939), intended to represent the Nazi concept of Blood and Soil. Many of his works survived the war only because the Nazi government removed them from Berlin.

He lost his studio to a bombing raid in 1943, and was killed in another raid early the following year. [1] One of his most important works, a four-part fresco mural in the Bahlsen bakery in Hanover from 1917, was destroyed later in 1944.