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Adolph Jentsch – Namibia’s German painter
12/11/2020
Art
# Adolph Jentsch – Namibia’s German painter
Composed By: Francois Boois (opens new window)@Facebook
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In this piece we remember Adolph Jentsch, a famed German-Namibian painter, as one in a series of articles where we introduce lesser known or forgotten German immigrants of Southern Africa.
Adolph Jentsch
Jentsch was the son of a Lutheran church official, Stephan Jentsch, and his wife Adele.he spend 6 years at the Dresden's Staatsakademie fϋr Bildende Künste today's College of Fine Arts.He was awarded the Königlich-Sächsiche Staatsmedaille fur Kunst und Wissenschaft.after which he worked for Gussman, decorating public buildings and doing minor restorations.
When the first world war broke out Jentsch was placed in the Jäger-Reserve, but developed a crippling rheumatism.He later married a young divorcee, Anne Ilgen, in 1920,which he met after the war and together they operated a small factory making spray-containers for perfume. His wife was mostly in charge of the entire operation while Jentsch painted continued to venture into different styles and perfect the once he already have.
His work was first brought into the mainstream when he illustrated a children's book in 1927 which didn't bring much fame to the artist as it did the author,he later joined a group of interior decorators in Czechoslovakia.Convulsed by the First World War and its devastating effect on Germany, the political and economic unease affected the work of artists. The 1920’s was a difficult time in Germany, with inflation and unemployment rising and a turn to the far right of the political spectrum by the early 1930’s. Fascism began to affect all spheres of life, not least the arts; many artists were declared “degenerate”, works were seized and removed from museums and galleries, the famed Bauhuas was closed down, and the result was that many artists chose to emigrate. Unable to obtain commissions any longer, Jentsch made the decision to emigrate in 1938, after his cousin invited Jentsch and his family to visit him in South West Africa (Namibia). He would never return to Germany.so he took up an offer to vacation on his cousins farm in Namibia (then called South West Africa).He arrived in Africa in early 1938, and never left, working in oils and watercolour until his death in 1977.
Jentsch’s collection of Chinese calligraphic paintings and his interest in Chinese philosophy and yoga, which had started earlier in Germany, influenced his landscape paintings in South West Africa. Landscapes were his primary subject matter, and he often painted the same scene several times. “It is a great art of Adolph Jentsch that he can paint the same landscape over and over – and yet every time it is completely different. Similarly, the Chinese painted the same things again and again,but were never repetitive.
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