Josef Prinke - who was this little-known and forgotten painter?

Born on 3 May 1891 in Brüx (now Most) in northern Bohemia, Josef Prinke was the fifth of six children in a family of foresters. When Josef was 16 years old, his father died after being shot in the lungs by a poacher. Prinke has to drop out of grammar school and forgo studying art for the time being. The commercial apprenticeship he began did not suit his inclinations, so Josef joined the army as a volunteer in 1911. In 1914, on the Serbian front, he was almost fatally wounded by a bullet to the lung. He was found by chance and survived, although he was initially declared dead by the field doctors.

Three difficult years followed in a military hospital in Prague, where he came across Rudolf Steiner's book "Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten" (How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds). At the same time, Prinke decided to become a painter. As a war invalid, he was finally able to study at the Prague Art Academy, where he became a pupil of the symbolist and expressionist August Brömse (1873-1925). Brömse appreciated him and encouraged Josef to exhibit his work. Prinke successfully completed his studies in 1921. From then on, he lived in Prague. Painting courses in Czech and German enabled him to make a modest living.

From 1920 onwards, there is evidence of his stays in Dornach, which influenced his painting style more than what he learnt from August Brömse. In 1923 and 1924, he had personal encounters with Rudolf Steiner and conversations about painting and Prinke's works. In his diaries, he notes Rudolf Steiner's words: "The primary thing in painting is the formative power of the image - black and white must have spaces, but colour must create space from the surface - there must be movement in sculpture, soul in painting". On 26 June 1945, Josef Prinke died of abuse and exhaustion in a collection camp.

His wife Agnes was able to rescue a considerable number of his sketches and paintings from rubble heaps, where much of his work ended up at the end of the Second World War.

Josef Prinke was one of the signatories of the "Appeal to the Academic Youth" in Dornach in autumn 1920 following Rudolf Steiner's lecture "Die Erkenntnisaufgabe der Jugend". [

"That one does not first have a motif, a content before one, which is then coloured - no, there is colourful content... Anthroposophy can already be felt in a deep sense; not in that one paints "essences", but in that colour has become essential." (The painter Julius Hebing (1891-1973) on Prinke's paintings.)

Text: Andreas Albert, curator of the exhibition