Willy Lucas
1884 Bad Driburg – 1918 Partenkirchen
Short information about the artist
Along with Max Clarenbach, Richard Bloos and Max Stern, Willy Lucas is one of the most important impressionists in the Rhineland. Within about 20 years, Lucas created an oeuvre of over 600 paintings and numerous sketches, watercolors and postcards. In 2009-10 there was shown a retrospective on his 125th birthday in Paderborn. In addition to the extensive exhibition catalog, a catalog raisonné was also published.
Verkaufte Kunstwerke
More information about the artist
Along with Max Clarenbach, Richard Bloos and Max Stern, Willy Lucas is one of the most important impressionists in the Rhineland. Within about 20 years, Lucas created an oeuvre of over 600 paintings and numerous sketches, watercolors and postcards. In 2009-10 there was shown a retrospective on his 125th birthday in Paderborn. In addition to the extensive exhibition catalog, a catalog raisonné was also published.
Painting
After an in-depth training at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, the highly talented young artist turned to the direction of the French Impressionists.
His Lower Rhine landscapes, which were initially dark, are becoming increasingly lighter under the impression of the open-air painting. Within a few years, light and colour became the content of his art, which discovered a theme full of life and movement in the cityscapes, an almost ideal subject for modern painting, which was already preferred by the French impressionists.
Lack of recognition and health problems
The artistic boom was followed by health problems and a lack of recognition.
For the established Rhenish taste in art around 1910, Lucas was too progressive with his paintings and sales of his works stalled. By marrying the daughter of a wealthy Cologne merchant, Lucas achieved the material independence that allowed him to maintain his artistic course.
In 1918, in the last year of the war and still at the height of his artistic creativity, Willy Lucas died of the consequences of a lung disease that had already led him to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to recuperate a year earlier.