Leo Putz

_{Meran 1869 - 1940 Meran}

Leo Putz was born in Merano in 1869. From 1889 onward he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1899 he was a founding member of the artists’ association “Die Scholle“. One of the central themes of his artistic œuvre is the human being, especially women. The so-called “Hartmannsberger Pictures“ can be cited as a fine example of this, capturing the magic and light of plein-air painting in a nude study of bathing girls. Putz moved to Gauting in Bavaria with his family in 1923. His first foreign journey to São Paulo began in 1929. Leo Putz spent the following years with his family in South America and undertook extensive trips to Buenos Aires and Bahia in the rain forests. The years in South America brought new impulses to his painting, which now displayed southern landscapes and people. Although Leo Putz’s work was honoured with a major exhibition in 1935 upon his return to Germany, the artist saw himself forced to flee from the Nazis to his native city of Merano in 1936. In the following years up to his death in 1940 his artistic œuvre largely consisted of images of fortresses, castles and landscapes in Southern Tyrol. Leo Putz died in 1940 in Merano.