Rudolf Schlichter

* 6TH DECEMBER 1890 IN CALW, CLOSE TO STUTTGART (GER)
† 3RD MAY 1955 IN MUNICH (GER)

Rudolf Schlichter was a German artist and an important member of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. After an apprenticeship as a porcelain painter he studied at the art school in Stuttgart between 1906 and 1908 and at the art academy in Karlsruhe, under Wilhelm Trübner and Hans Thoma, amongst others. After surviving the West Front in the First World War he moved to Berlin in the 1920s and became a member of the Novembergruppe, the Berliner Secession, the Berliner Dadaists and the KPD. In 1924 he became secretary of the communist artist community Rote Gruppe and left the Novembergruppe. In the 1930s he sustained himself through his drawings and book illustrations and published his 2 part autobiography. Classified as a degenerate artist by the National Socialists, he moved to Munich and had contact to the resistance group Weisse Rose and Hans Scholl. After the war he founded the Neue Gruppe and turned to surrealism. He died in 1955 in Munich.