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By the early 1930s, just a few years after moving to Chicago, Moessel’s paintings primarily consisted of biblical scenes. However, he began to shift the subject matter of his work from literal depictions of bible stories to more surreal imagery of his own suffering often featuring biblical allusions and religious imagery. Moessel would draw from his own imagination to paint his own personal demons that reflected the torment he faced during this period.
This shift in style revealed many new symbols, such as the gallows representing an ill fate for these characters, and the humanoids with shapes for heads descending the staircase, which he repeatedly painted in the last decade of his career.
Familiar, recurring imagery also appears, however. The scorpion climbing a figure’s back in the foreground, for example, also appears in "War and Damnation." Additionally, the nude woman on the bottom left appears to be painted from the same reference he used for "Suzanna and the Elders"—he even includes the arm band he painted on her. It is unclear, however, whether or not the woman is supposed to be Susanna herself in this painting.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.