Hans Reichel

b. 1892, Würzburg, Germany

d. 1958, Paris, France

Hans Reichel was a German artist, naturalized as a French citizen in 1948, best known for his expressive watercolors that reimagined nature into fantastical and dreamlike compositions. Reichel was born in Würzburg in 1892, a time marked by artistic revolutions, war, and social unrest. As a child, Reichel moved to Munich with his family, where he began to learn painting and violin while his sister took piano lessons from Lily Klee, the wife of Paul Klee. Reichel and his sister became enmeshed in the avant-garde scene of Munich, frequenting the Café Stéfanie and befriending figures such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Emil Szittya.

In 1918, after a year at Hans Hofmann’s School for Modern Art, Reichel began his career as a painter. He moved to an apartment in a small castle in Schwabing, and on his recommendation, Klee rented the adjacent studio as a workspace. Reichel and Klee traded paintings and bonded over a love of music—ultimately forming a lifelong friendship. Through Klee, Reichel also met and traded paintings with Wassily Kandinsky and Alexej Von Jawlensky. In 1929 Reichel moved to Paris, and on the recommendation of Klee, introduced himself to the well-established art dealer Jeanne Bucher. He became friends with the photographer Brassai, and Roger Bissiere brought him into the activities of the Academie Ranson. During this period, Reichel participated in both solo and group expositions, working in both oil and watercolor, in a mix of representational and abstract works that emphasized color and form.

At the beginning of WWII, like other German speaking men and women living in France, Reichel was interned in a series of French camps and after 1943, was hidden in a safe-house near Cazaubon until the end of the war. Despite the sordid conditions in some of the camps, Reichel was able to be deeply productive, supported by friends such as Paul Frankl, Wilhelm Uhde and Lily Klee who sent him money, food, and painting supplies. Jeanne Merle d’Aubigné of CIMADE noted, “It was completely incomprehensible to me, how someone could paint these wonderful, fairytale-like little paintings in such a horrible environment.”

After the war, Reichel continued to develop his work, exhibited regularly at the Jeanne Bucher Galerie and other French venues, as well as in Switzerland and Germany, where he concentrated on watercolors that emphasized improvisation and expression.
Hans Reichel died in Paris on December 7, 1958 and at his funeral in the Montparnasse Cemetery, the sculptor and art-critic Pierre-Miguel Merlet, who had earlier published a monograph on Reichel, provided the eulogy. In 1960 Reichel’s work was honored in a comprehensive exhibition in Cologne and at the Hanover Kestner Gesellschaft. Today, his work is held in the European collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Pompidou; the Unterlinden Museum, Colmar; the Kunsthaus, Zurich; and the Lenbachhaus, Munich; and in the United States at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and the Museum of the University of Michigan.