Hans Zessler

Description
Hans Zessler's life story is extremely eventful: He was able to give up his job at an advertising agency when he married the daughter of a merchant from Bremen. He then studied art history in Munich, and in 1925 he moved to Worpswede. Economic circumstances forced him to give up painting in 1929, but his planned farming operation was forbidden by the National Socialists. In 1938, he moved to Hamburg and began studying dentistry, where he ran a practice from 1945 to 1973. In pastels and drawings, Zessler evoked the North German landscape in his early work; even the "Seascape," created in June 1922, displays local color. Using an extravagant drawing technique of curved and circular lines, the artist presents a post-Impressionist and decidedly melancholic view of the sea with a steamer and sailboats. Water, clouds, and the smoke from the steamer's chimney form a unique connection within the tangle of lines.