Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen

As a child, Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen suffered from joint rheumatism, which led to a chronic heart condition. From an early age, she engaged intensely in drawing and painting. From 1907 to 1909, she trained as a drawing teacher in Hamburg and subsequently worked at a school in Schleswig. Alongside this, she created free works in various styles. In 1910, she married the Hamburg architect and painter Emil Maetzel. As a married woman, she was no longer allowed to work as a teacher in the Wilhelmine Empire and had to give up her position.

Maetzel-Johannsen developed her own artistic style, drawing inspiration from the French painter Cézanne, characterized by a strictly structured composition. She incorporated brushstroke techniques into her design. At the same time, she also created very painterly works that harkened back to German plein air painting, where the flat effect became a defining formal element. A third area of her work showcases pieces in which she emphasized the importance of line. Between 1911 and 1918, she traveled repeatedly to Berlin. During World War I, she studied under Lovis Corinth. After the war, a successful period began for the artist couple in Hamburg. Together with her husband, Maetzel-Johannsen was one of the co-founders of the Hamburg Secession. Drawing from the works of the dissolved artist group Brücke, early Cubism, and African sculpture, she created her expressionist masterpieces starting in 1919. In doing so, she developed an individual mode of expression within Expressionism. While her works feature typical angular contours, a flat spatial conception, and dynamic diagonal compositions, unlike her colleagues, the artist avoided any aggression in her compositions. In her still lifes and figure paintings, a contemplative mood resonates, contrasting with the dynamic structure of the images.

In 1921, Maetzel-Johannsen moved into her own studio in Hamburg at Ulmenau 3. Here, she produced works that emphasized the flatness of the images more strongly. At the same time, she engaged with Neue Sachlichkeit. Gradually, she incorporated this style, which began to spread in Germany in the mid-1920s, into her work. In 1923, she completed a commission for wall paintings in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In 1925, she spent half a year in Paris and Chartres. In France, she gathered numerous new inspirations for her work that would influence the last five years of her career. She created works that bore Cézannesque traits, while others were influenced by Fauvism. Additionally, there is a group of works where she attempted to integrate line into her painterly approach. However, a cheerful to melancholic mood predominates in Maetzel-Johannsen's works, imbued with a harmonious expression. In 1929, she undertook a trip to Visby on the island of Gotland. In 1930, Maetzel-Johannsen worked on a design for a ceiling painting in the Hamburg Planetarium. However, she was unable to execute it, as she died on February 8, 1930, at the age of 44 following heart surgery. Besides her husband, she left behind four children: Ruth (* July 21, 1911; † October 22, 2002), Bogumil (* 1913; † November 1989), Peter (* 1915; † July 1940), and Monika (* 1917; † October 10, 2010). Like many women in art, her work was largely forgotten. It wasn't until 2014 that a monograph by Jan Buchholz and Doris von Zitzewitz on the life and work of the artist was published.