Paul Hey
Paul Friedrich Hey was born on October 19, 1867, in Munich. His father was a music teacher and his siblings were also closely connected to art.
Paul's serious artistic education started in 1886 when he entered the preschool at the Munich Art Academy, where he studied under Karl Raupp, Johann Caspar Herterich, Ludwig Lofftz, and Heinrich Zugel. His earliest successes were studies from nature which brought him numerous awards and his first job offers. While he preferred oil in his first creative years, gouache soon became his medium of choice. In 1900, he created the first picture postcards for Ottmar Zieher. Later he worked for Ackermanns, Thienemanns, and numerous others.
Postcards are very likely Paul Hey's signature work. Not only they were tremendously popular and often sold as collection items, but he used the same motifs as school murals, and the very same pictures were also printed on calendar pages. His probably most known work was a series of one hundred (!) color pictures from different popular fairy tales, mostly by the Brothers Grimm. They were published as cards inserted in packages of cigarettes by Reemtsma Cigarettenfabriken in 1939 and there was also an album with printed fairy tales, where empty squares were ready for cards to be glued in.
Soon after his studies, he joined the army and became connected with it for about a quarter of a century until he was promoted to lieutenant in reserve in 1920. In World War I he served as a soldier and war painter. But his legacy undoubtedly lies in illustrations of fairy tales and folk songs.
Around 1900 he moved from Munich to Gauting which lies nearby. There he lived with his wife, a piano teacher Elisabeth Wilhelmine Duensing (1879-1952), who was the first woman elected to the Gautinger municipal council. Pal Hey died on October 1952 in Gauting. His illustrations are still reprinted in new editions of fairy tale books.
Comments
Post a Comment