Julius Bissier`s Watercolours

Like many others of his time, German artist Julius Bissier (1893-1965) had a path that, starting at objective realism, led him to the pure Abstract. Owing to the influence of figures such as Willi Baumeister, Picasso, Fernand Léger or Paul Klee, Bissier freed himself from figurative representation, as shown in his early work and had given him a certain status but made him feel like he had reached a dead-end. He turned to Abstraction. Progressively, he started using sets of elementary abstract forms and graphic symbols echoing Oriental writing.

Bissier escaped the persecution of the degenerate artists led by the German Nazis, unscathed. The expression (Entartete Kunst), first used by Goebbels, referenced Abstract painters or, at the very least, those who were not figurative artists. Bissier managed to protect himself by means of a self-imposed seclusion during which he continued along the Abstract path, in the deep corners of his atelier. As such, he did not exhibit between 1933 and 1945. He experimented with engravings, monotypes, panel painting and watercolours and with these techniques he developed his style. Despite the quality and meaning of his work, he is today, unjustly so, a somewhat unknown artist.

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