30/05/2026
Eberhard Viegener (German, 1890-1967) was born on this day.
Still life with Cactus and Fruit, 1927, oil on wood.
Eberhard Viegener was noted for his contributions to the German Expressionist and New Objectivity movements. Over the course of his career, he shifted between several distinct aesthetic modes. While engaged in a painting apprenticeship and studying at the Folkwang Museum, he painted many early works in a tighter, Realist manner before painting more vibrant, Expressionist landscape compositions after the war. He depicted villages, skies, and waterways using rectilinear swatches of color, often resembling the work of the later Color Field abstraction movement.
Viegener was labeled "Degenerate” artist by the N**i party. Nevertheless, he went on to receive the Karl-Ernst Osthaus Prize from the city of Hagen in 1947. The artist had several significant posthumous exhibitions of his work, including a solo show at the Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History in Münster in 1990.
