In Upper Bavaria, Heinrich Campendonk successfully pushed ahead with his artistic development, creating a unique visual language and a profound, enigmatic imagery. Campendonk was invited to take part in the first exhibition of the "Blaue Reiter" in Munich, and in 1913 he also showed works at the exhibitions "Rheinische Expressionisten" in Bonn and the "Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon" at Herwarth Walden's gallery "Der Sturm" in Berlin, all important exhibitions of classical Modernism before the World War I, a period in which Campendonk created seminal works in all techniques, of which this exceptional and large painting "Landschaft mit Tieren" is a prime example.
On the recommendation of Wassily Kandinsky, the young Heinrich Campendonk, a student of Jan Thorn-Prikker at the College of Textile Science in Krefeld, convinced the art dealer, collector, publicist and publisher Alfred Flechtheim, one of the most important supporters of the avant-garde, to become his patron in 1911. Flechtheim acquired his first works and supported the artist's pioneering trip to Sindelsdorf in Upper Bavaria, where Franz Marc lived. A letter from October 7, 1911, that Campendonk wrote to his friend Adda Deichmann shortly after his arrival, reveals just how intensive and formative his contact with the artists of "Der Blaue Reiter", Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, was at the time: "I arrived in Munich at seven in the morning and met [Helmuth] Macke an hour later. In the afternoon we were at Kandinsky's, where we saw great things and met Mr. Kuno Amiet as well as some other gentlemen. On Monday we went to Salon Thannhauser and the Pinakothek and also met Erbslöh. In the evening, we drove to Penzberg with Macke's cousin [August] , where Mr. Marc picked us up in his car, and we made our way to the strange place of Sindelsdorf." (quoted from: Andrea Firmenich, Heinrich Campendonk, Recklinghausen 1989, p. 25). They took a first group picture on the balcony of Kandinsky's city apartment (fig. 1), a document of the time of intensive discussions and planning for the publication of the almanac "Der Blaue Reiter".
Campendonk's university friend Helmuth Macke and his cousin August had arranged this encounter for him. From the fall of 1911, he and his future wife Adda were living in the immediate vicinity of Franz and Maria Marc in Sindelsdorf. After Marc was killed in the war in March 1916, Campendonk moved to Seeshaupt at the southern end of Lake Starnberg the following May. Hence, the years of his artistic development were characterized by the close connection to the artists around the "Blue Rider", as well as by an intensive connection to the Upper Bavarian landscape around Sindelsdorf and Seeshaupt, and later also by the surroundings of the small mining town of Penzberg a little further south.
In these early years in Upper Bavaria, Campendonk's work clearly bears the influence of Franz Marc. Both artists made their own versions of these bizarre animal scenes and landscapes transformed into fairy tales, rural idylls immersed in a dreamlike and contemplative solitude in luminous colors. "The area around Sindelsdorf was hilly, with elevations alternating with depressions," Maria Marc recalls. "There were these sloping pastures with interesting transitions in the terrain. The livestock grazing on them, horses and cattle, offered the observer ever-changing, lively scenes." (Quoted from: Maria Marc, Mein Leben mit Franz Marc, Munich 2016, p. 116). Even in early works such as "Springendes Pferd" (fig. 2) and "Frau mit Reh" (fig. 3) that young Campendonk showed in the first exhibition of the "Blaue Reiter" at Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in December 1911, his distinctive style becomes evident: A compositional combination of pictorial set pieces in a fixed and at the same time loose context, a content that avoids any kind of narrative. In Campendonk's work, animals are individuals, embedded in an imaginary mesh of landscapes, that at times contradict one another in their painterly conception and their formal intention. Campendonk's style around this time was determined by a juxtaposition of landscape planes, a division of the pictorial surface into disintegrated, seemingly cubic 'levels' assembled from very different 'models'. A variety of animals moves within a world of fenced boundaries, enclosed celestial gardens laid out across the canvas that structure the composition and add a certain coherence. A compelling narrative is avoided. Campendonk lines things up more than he connects them; everything is described in a certain flow. The result is an illusion, a hovering state between lyrical abstraction and natural objectivity that cannot be interpreted in either way. They are painted riddles that are to be grasped in their entirety and seen as such. This is where Campendonk clearly differs from Franz Marc.
The beginning of the First World War divided the artists around the "Blauer Reiter", and their common ideas would only be promoted through the commitment of the Berlin gallerist and publisher Herwarth Walden. Franz Marc, as well as August and Helmuth Macke enrolled as volunteers, while Wassily Kandinsky and Alexej von Jawlensky had to leave Germany as Russian citizens. The former returns to Moscow while the latter sought asylum in Switzerland. Campendonk refused to serve, but he was drafted and discharged shortly after in the spring of 1915 due to illness. August Macke was killed in September 1914, Franz Marc in March 1916; the loss of both friends and artistic patrons affected Campendonk particularly severely. He moved to a farmhouse in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg, where he lived in seclusion trying to overcome the horrors of the war and emancipating himself from the style of the "Blaue Reiter" in a decisive way, eventually attaining his very own style.
In 1920, Campendonk went on a trip to Italy, and Flechtheim, who had been promoting the painter in group exhibitions since 1914, organized a solo exhibition. In 1923, the artist returned to Krefeld, and was appointed professor at the School of Applied Arts in Essen, before his call to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1926. The National Socialists dismissed Campendonk after they had seized power, but he was appointed professor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 1935. In 1937, he was defamed in the inflammatory publication "Säuberung des Kunsttempels" (Purge of the Art Temple), and his works were also shown in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. In 1944, Campendonk was able to hide from the German occupying forces and continued to teach after the war. The artist died in Amsterdam on May 9, 1957. [MvL]