Charles Crodel

Charles Crodel (Marseille, 1894 – Munich, 1973) was a German painter, lithographer and stained glass artist associated with Jena, Halle and Berlin. His work is notable for its continuity despite Nazi persecution, and for his teaching at academies in Germany and the United States.

He studied in 1914 with Richard Riemerschmid, one of the founders of the Deutscher Werkbund, at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, and from 1915 at the University of Jena, where he trained as a painter and lithographer. He belonged to the Berlin Secession and became a close friend of Gerhard Marcks. In 1923 the German National Gallery in Berlin, and later the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, acquired his woodcuts and lithographs.

From 1927 he taught printing and monumental painting at the Burg Giebichenstein in Halle until he was dismissed in 1933. His murals in Halle and those dedicated to Goethe at Bad Lauchstädt were destroyed that summer after he was expelled from Nazi-aligned artistic bodies for producing what was deemed degenerate art. He continued teaching in a private circle at the house of Paul Frankl.

In the following years he worked on glass design for industry with Wilhelm Wagenfeld and on pottery decoration with Hedwig Bollhagen. He later turned to stained glass and mosaic. After the war he taught again in Halle, Berlin and Dresden, and from 1952 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His students included Bob Thompson and Sam Gilliam. He died in Munich in 1973, returning from a session of the Berlin Academy.