Already known during his lifetime for his captivating work and character, Lovis Corinth is today considered one of the most important artists of Modernism. Committed to the artistic aspiration of Realism, his work, however, resists classification in the traditional art canon. With regard to a relatively long academic education, his late work bears witness to an increased virtuosity and autonomy in his use of colour and composition. In his œuvre, Corinth almost exemplifies the paradigm shift in 20th century art from representation to creation and continues to inspire generations of artists until today.

Born in 1858 in Tapiau (today Gvardejsk/Russia) in East Prussia, Franz Heinrich Louis Corinth, who later is to call himself Lovis, receives the support of his father from an early age in his plans to become a painter. In 1867 Corinth enrolls at the Königsberg Academy of Fine Arts, studying with the genre painter Otto Günther, among others, who eventually recommends him to Bayrische Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, which was an international art center in the second half of the 19th century. There Corinth attends the classes of Franz Defregger and Ludwig von Löfftz. In 1884 he spends three months in Antwerp and then he leaves for Paris, enrolling at the Académie Julian, a private art school, and becoming a student of two celebrated Salon painters – Adolphe William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury.

While the influence of his academy teachers is quite obvious in his early work, in Munich Corinth increasingly develops his own style. The wealth of subjects and their idiosyncratic realisation is striking: portraits and nudes alternate with burlesque scenes from mythology, which contrast with the exaggeratedly realistic execution of religious themes.

When contact with the Berlin Secession intensifies, Corinth decides to move to the capital in 1901 and opens an art school. He becomes a member of the Berlin Secession and is elected member of the executive committee the following year. He successfully acquires socially important clients. In December 1911 he suffers a severe stroke from which he recovers. An intensive phase of work follows in which he repeatedly composes specific subjects such as self-portraits, nudes, flower still lifes and, above all, the landscape around the Walchensee. All motifs are executed in painting and drawing well as in prints. In the tradition of alla prima painting, he uses a dynamic ductus to combine pure colour wet next to wet into a compositional unity.

In 1925 Corinth has been appointed honorary member of the Bayrische Akademie. In the same year, the artist dies of pneumonia on July 17 during a trip to Zandvoort in the Netherlands.