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Suffering before death or “Eternal Peace,” a family lies deceased in the ruins of their burning home while a child with a doll is seated in the wreckage. Nimble, boney fingers hang above the scene with the cause of the destruction.
Skeleton hands suspending a sphere over a chaotic scene of destruction is a motif repeatedly employed by Moessel. The inhabitants of such worlds are at the mercy of this looming, other-worldly presence that threatens to drop the wrecking ball at any time. This symbol creates tension in the piece as it is the “prelude” before the ball is dropped to destroy what is left. Along with countless other Moessel paintings, this can be spotted in the piece "War and Damnation" as a symbol of death.
This painting in particular was controversial, disturbing many critics and onlookers, as the brutality of the subject-matter was no longer inspired by biblical allegories, but instead a scene of tragedy and ruin from his own imagination involving a child.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.