Eine höhere Entwicklungsetappe in der siebenbürgischen Landschaftsmalerei. Fritz Schullerus (1866-1898)
A new Stage in the Evolution of the Landscape in Transylvania. Fritz Schullerus (1866-1898)

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the 19th century, the art in Transylvania was renewing receiving and adapting elements of the European modernity. Due to his talent, receptivity towards the modern ways of expression and under the pressure of the personal drama, Fritz Schullerus succeeded to mark a new stage in the development of landscape in Transylvania. Fritz Schullerus studied at the Drawing Academy in Budapest with Bertalan Székely, then at the Art Academy in Munich with Gabriel Hackl and Karl Moor. It was the time and place for coming in touch with the various ways of expression of the new painting. He was influenced by the realism and naturalism of Gustave Courbet and Bastien Lepage, by Wilhelm Leibl and Hans Thoma, Max Liebermann and Fritz von Udhe. The influence of Stimmungslandschaft /that had Adolf Holzel, Ludwig Dill, Alfred Bachmann and Otto Modersohn among the most important representatives/ was strong upon his landscapes. The option for landscape as a genre was quite late and was synchronic with the beginning of a fatal illness. Thus, the choice for landscape as way of expression was the result of the personal drama, not of the rejection of the hostile industrial society, as it was for the artists in Central Europe. The Transylvanian artist sublimated his sickness and vulnerability, and probably this is the explanation for the extraordinarily intensive way of communicating with nature and its expression on the canvas. The two series of landscapes that are to be mentioned here are those on the Olt Valley and those in Paltinis. Through these works, the imitative character of the work of art so much blamed by the aesthetics of modernity was left behind. Schullerus’ landscapes are part of the painting of confession to which László Páal, Ion Andreescu and Jenö Máticska also belong. With his work, Fritz Schullerus succeeded to surpass in technique, subject and emotion the Biedermeier landscape marking a phase in the evolution of painting in Transylvania, which was synchronic with the genre conception in the European painting.

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