Arnold Böcklin

Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was a symbolist Swiss painter.

He studied at Düsseldorf where he became a friend of Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach. Originally a landscape painter, his travels through Brussels, Zurich, Geneva and Rome, exposed him to classical and Renaissance art, and the Mediterranean landscape. These new influences brought allegorical and mythological figures into his compositions. In 1866 he resided at Bâle, in 1871 in Munich, in 1885 in Hottingen (Switzerland) and at the end of his life in Fiesole.

Influenced by Romanticism his painting is symbolist within the Art Noveau style. His pictures portray mythological, fantastical figures along classical architecture constructions (revealing often an obssession with death) creating a strange, phantasy world.

Böcklin is best known for his five versions of The Isle of the Dead, which partly evokes the English Cemetery, Florence, close to his studio and where his baby daughter Maria had been buried.

Otto Weisert designed an Art Nouveau typeface in 1904 and named it “Arnold Böcklin” in his honor. The design uses tendrils hanging from many of the capital letters and across the top of the minuscule letters v through y. The typeface was later appropriated by the hippy movement and it's influence can also be seen in the work of Seventies illustrators such as Roger Dean. The Stuckist artist Paul Harvey has also used the typeface in his work.

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

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