Heinrich Campendonk

Heinrich Campendonk was born 3rd November 1889 in Krefeld, Germany and died 9th May 1957 in Amsterdam.

As a young artist, he took part in the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter in December 1911 in Munich. Contact with the artists in Der Blaue Reiter had a profound influence on his work, and for a while he emulated Marc’s pure colours and prismatic forms but after the First World War he developed the decorative primitivism for which he is best known.

Following his dismissal by the Nazis from his teaching post at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf in 1933, he moved to Belgium in 1934, and the following year was offered an appointment at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, where he returned to his first love of the applied arts, working with textiles, stage design and stained glass.