Hans Reichel

b. 1892, Würzburg, Germany

d. 1958, Paris, France

Hans Reichel was a German artist, 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.

In 1918, after a year at Hans Hofmann’s School for Modern Art, Reichel began his career as a painter. He moved to a small castle in Schwabing, where he rented studio space to Klee. 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. In 1929 Reichel moved to Paris, where he became befriended the photographer Brassaï, as well as Roger Bissière, who introduced him to his future dealer, Jeanne Bucher. During this period, Reichel exhibited intermittently and painted abstract arrangements in both oil and watercolor that emphasized color and form.

Reichel became a prisoner of war in 1939 and was interned at various campus until 1943. Despite the conditions, Reichel was deeply productive while in and out of the camps, often supported by friends, such as Paul Frankl and Wilhelm Uhde, who sent him supplies and painting materials throughout his internment. 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, focusing on watercolors that emphasized improvisation and expression.

Hans Reichel died in Paris on December 7, 1958 and Rilke spoke at his funeral. Reichel’s work was honored in a comprehensive exhibition shown in Cologne and at the Hanover Kestner Gesellschaft in 1960. Today, his work is in collections such as the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio.