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Living through both World Wars and narrowly escaping Germany only a few years before Hitler rose to power, Moessel had strong opinions concerning freedom and liberty. With his repeated use of communist and Marxist symbols, it can be speculated that he had allegiances to these groups, or at the very least shared some of their philosophies. However, it is interesting to note that Moessel has also painted many other religious and political symbols in a positive light, even some that contradict each other.
In some of his works such as this one, he returned to an image of two serpentine creatures with human-like flesh draped over a cityscape or laying over the world. In other pieces that feature these beings, the creature on the left is labeled “freedom” and decorated with symbols of currency, alluding to the freedom granted to people on the margins of society when wealth is equally distributed. The creature on the right is labeled “liberty” with the hammer and sickle emblazoned on pendants around its neck. Although the serpent figures are not branded here, they are recognizable in form and relationship. They are large, impossible to ignore, and are Moessel’s solution to the destruction he painted. The creatures are calm, yet at the mercy of one another, seemingly equally matched—fragile and unpredictable, but ultimately in solidarity with the other as creatures behind them attach themselves like parasites to their bodies to try to sabotage their peaceful union. Label Type
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Julius Moessel was born in 1871 in Fürth, located in the Bavaria region of Germany. He went on to study at the Munich Academy and, by the 1900s, cemented himself as one of the most venerated architectural painters and muralists in Germany. His detailed, ornamental work, including intricate scrollwork frescoes and botanical decoration, was in demand by leading German architects. Perhaps most famously, he was commissioned to paint the jury room of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where many of the World War II war crime trials later took place.
Once at the precipice of wealth, prosperity, and high regard in his field, World War I left Moessel desperate for work as Germany's economy deteriorated, greatly impacting his commissions, career, and prestige. When he could no longer support himself, let alone maintain his comfortable lifestyle, he moved to Chicago where he began a new career as an easel painter. Despite his emigré status, he quickly rose to acclaim again, exhibiting in sixty exhibitions in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan. As his reputation for being the idiosyncratic character of the Chicago art scene grew, Moessel continued to break free of the constraints that tethered him to architectural painting— instead, he would shock contemporaries and critics with the pluralist nature of his work.
Moessel painted a wide array of subjects ranging from horrific Boschian scenes of Hell and suffering, to botanical paintings of animals peacefully interacting, to Surreal or Symbolist works of politics and religion. Despite the extremity and incongruity of his work, it captivated one of Chicago's most esteemed art critics, C.J. Bulliet, who wrote for the Daily News and Art Digest. Bulliet was adamant in his endearment to Moessel’s work, writing that “Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí might sit profitably at his feet for a few hours to learn the secret of the awe and wonder” Moessel so easily evoked in viewers of his work. Bulliet even went so far as to dub him “one of the living masters of the world.”
Even during periods of popularity, Moessel rarely sold his paintings. As such, hundreds of his works sat collecting dust in his studio instead of being safely housed in museums, galleries, and private collections. Being a confrontational and callous man with divisive opinions and a fiery temperament, he would often dissolve relationships with curators and patrons and shirk opportunities that could have potentially brought him the success he knew in Germany. With dwindling business relationships and publicity, Moessel descended into anonymity and died in poverty, largely forgotten, even in the historical archives and memories of Chicago and Fürth, where his reputation would not adhere itself to history.