KLINGER, MAX (1857-1920), German painter, etcher and sculptor, was born at Leipzig on Feb. 18, 1857. He attended the classes at the Carlsruhe art school in 1874, and went in the fol lowing year to Berlin, where in 1878 he created a sensation at the Academy exhibition with two series of pen-and-ink drawings— the "Series upon the Theme of Christ" and "Fantasies upon the Finding of a Glove." The daring originality of these imaginative and eccentric works caused an outburst of indignation, and the artist was voted insane ; nevertheless the "Glove" series was bought by the Berlin National Gallery. From 1883 to 1886 he studied in Paris and then visited Italy. In 1893 he settled at Leipzig. His painting of "The Judgment of Paris" caused another storm of indignant protest in 1887, owing to its rejection of all conventional attributes and the naïve directness of the conception. His vivid and somewhat morbid imagination, with its leaning towards the gruesome and disagreeable, and the Goyaesque turn of his mind, found their best expression in his "cycles" of etch ings : "Deliverances of Sacrificial Victims told in Ovid," "A Brahms Phantasy," "Eve and the Future," "A Life," and "Of Death"; but in his use of the needle he does not aim at the tech nical excellence of the great masters ; it supplies him merely with means of expressing his ideas. After 1886 Klinger devoted himself
more exclusively to painting and sculpture. In his painting he aims neither at classic beauty nor modern truth, but at grim impres siveness not without a touch of mysticism. His "Pieta." at the Dresden gallery, the frescoes at the Leipzig university, and the "Christ in Olympus," at the Modern gallery in Vienna, are char acteristic examples of his art. The Leipzig museum contains his sculptured "Salome" and "Cassandra." In sculpture he favours the use of varicoloured materials in the manner of the Greek chryselephantine sculpture. His "Beethoven" (1902) is a notable instance of his work in this direction. His last enterprise was a colossal monument to Richard Wagner, which remained unfinished at his death at Leipzig on July 5, 1920. The Leipzig museum has a representative collection of his work which is exhibited in a hall designed by the artist himself.
See Max Schmid and Vogel, Max Klinger (Bielefeld and Leipzig 1926).