Label Type
Object LabelLabel
Moessel was disgusted by greed. He painted arrogant characters in suits larger in relation to the other characters in these scenes, the figures usually depicted with gaunt faces, glazed over eyes, and ill-intent expressions.
Moessel’s painting, "Blind Providence," expresses this disgust. In this work, he depicts a massive tipping scale, one side filled with businessmen and even religious characters with cross necklaces, some of whom are so desperate to be on that side of the scale that they are dangling from it, trying with all their might to hoist themselves up to get inside, though there is not enough room. On the other side of the scale sits a small woman with her back turned, guarded by a meek, spherical character with glasses. A hand descends from the sky to pull up the side of the scale that should be weighed down by the many men as a symbol of “blind,” unjust interference.
"Atom of a Lost Soul" is the anatomy of the greed he painted in his many paintings like "Blind Providence." In this piece we see a man tempted with money, surrounded by benevolent morals which he looks past to fix his eyes on the “terrible hunger for gold” that looms above. Below him are the words “do your wrong and don’t feel evil,” which further represents the deterioration of his morals into self-serving justification.
“Atom of the lost soul - nucleus = insatiable greed. Surrounded by firm values, abrogated by triangle - +”
(from a typed note he titled "Explanation of My Atoms," 1951)Label Type
Artist BioLabel
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.