5 facts about Otto Sohn-Rethel

Otto Wilhelm Sohn-Rethel (1877–1949) German lepidopterist and a painter of the Düsseldorf college of painting art movement. Sohn-Rethel was a enthusiast of the art groups, Sonderbund organization and Young Rhineland. The prominent theme of his art was always juvenile men, and frequently they were nude.

Otto Wilhelm Sohn-Rethel was born on January 18, 1877, in Düsseldorf, Germany. He was the second son to artists Karl Rudolf Sohn and Else Sohn-Rethel. He was pure the name “Otto Wilhelm” after his great uncles, the painters Otto Rethel and Wilhelm Sohn. In the summer of 1883, Sohn-Rethel’s assimilation in butterflies began in-part because of his uncle, Erich Hettner (1868–1933).

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Starting in 1890, he studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Art Academy) under artists Heinrich Lauenstein, Hugo Crola, and Adolf Schill. Followed by assay at Académie Julian in Paris. He was a zealot of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (Association of German Artists).

Besides painting, he was a lepidopterist and studied and collected butterfly and moth species between 1902 and 1912. One of which was the moth subspecies named after him, Chortodes morrisii sohnretheli.

In 1902, Sohn-Rethel started his travels in Rome, followed by Frascati, and finally in 1904 to Anacapri a city upon the island of Capri. His wealth allowed him to stir in Capri, a place that was known as a gay community at the time. He painted portraits and figure studies, many of nude men taking into consideration here. One of his students during this grow old was the youthful Italian artist, Giovanni Tessitore. He maintained a studio in Rome. In the winter of 1903–1904 he sublet his Rome studio Villa Strohl-Fern to Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1906, he met taking place in Rome following his brother Karli, his brother-in-law Werner Heuser, and artists Karl Hofer, Hermann Haller and Maurice Sterne.

In 1909, Otto Sohn-Rethel associated the Sonderbund activity with supplementary Düsseldorf painters, which included Julius Bretz, Max Clarenbach, August Deusser, Walter Ophey, Wilhelm Schmurr, and his brothers Karli Sohn-Rethel and Alfred Sohn-Rethel. In 1919, Sohn-Rethel associated the art group, Young Rhineland.

During World War I, Sohn-Rethel served in the warfare and was stationed in Düsseldorf. During this period he painted the put out soldiers and would provide precise descriptions and images. After the warfare he established in Anacapri, Italy, and lived at Villa Lina. Villa Lina became a meeting place for the expatriate community including his nephew Alfred Sohn-Rethel, writer Norman Douglas, among others.

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He died on June 7, 1949, in Anacapri, Italy, where he is buried.

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