Eduard Bargheer

Eduard Bargheer, born in 1901, is a German painter and graphic artist. He is particularly known for his light, often mosaic-like watercolors from the 1950s.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Bargheer trained as an artist at the Hamburg-Lerchenfeld School of Applied Arts, where he aspired to become a freelance painter. In 1925, Bargheer traveled to Italy and, during a stay in Florence, developed a deep affection for the country and its culture, which would accompany the artist throughout his life. From 1934 to 1940, he taught at the Gerda Koppel art school in Hamburg. During a trip to Switzerland in 1935, he met Paul Klee, whose art had a lasting influence on him. That year he discovered Ischia, where he traveled annually from 1937 onwards. The events of the war prompted him to move to Forio d'Ischia in 1940. He did not work in Hamburg again until the early 1950s. In 1955, he took part in the documenta in Kassel and the Biennale in Sao Paulo. In the 1950s and 1960s, he taught art at universities in Hamburg, Rome and Berlin. Between 1960 and 1968, he made numerous trips to North and Central Africa. In 1976, he founded the Eduard Bargheer Foundation to support young artists.

While his early works can still be classified as Expressionist, Bargheer's formal language changed after the Second World War. The representational gives way to abstract motifs and forms, which are captured in watercolors but also in monumental paintings. In these he strives for a harmony of color and light, creating two-dimensional, symbolic representations and making the hidden architectural structures of the motif visible.

Eduard Bargheer dies in Hamburg in 1979.