Helmuth Macke
1891–1936 · German Expressionist painter, moving between Constructivism and abstraction
Helmuth Macke (Krefeld, 1891 – Hemmenhofen, 1936) was a German painter associated with Expressionism, whose work moved between Constructivism and abstraction. A cousin of the painter August Macke, he is less known than his relative, but his career shows how ideas circulated among German artistic circles in the early twentieth century.
He trained between 1906 and 1909 with the Dutch artist Jan Thorn-Prikker at the school of crafts and applied arts in Krefeld. In 1909 he met Franz Marc at Tegernsee, who introduced him to members of the New Artists' Association of Munich and lent him his summer apartment in Sindelsdorf. In 1913 his paintings The Bather and The Garden of Love were shown at the First German Autumn Salon in Berlin. After a stay in Ascona in 1930 he was expelled from Switzerland for selling some of his watercolours, and in 1933 he settled in Hemmenhofen, on Lake Constance, where he drowned during a boat trip in 1936.