Philipp Otto Runge

Philipp Otto Runge (July 23rd 1777 with Wolgast, † December 2nd 1810 with Hamburg) was a painter, Dessinateur, writer and theorist of German art , one of the largest representatives of romantic art with Caspar David Friedrich.

Life and work

Born in a family from carpenters of navy, Runge decides to become artist after having read poems of Tieck.

He studies with the academy of Copenhagen (1799 - 1801) under the direction of Jens Juel, then settles with Dresden, where he becomes acquainted with Caspar David Friedrich. In 1803, he moves for Hamburg. Runge had a mystical and pantheist frame of mind and tried to return in its work the harmony of the universe by using the symbolism of the color, the forms and the numbers. He wrote also Poésie and to this end projected a series of four tables entitled the moments of the day, intended to be exposed in a special building and accompanied by Musique and poetry. He thus sought to reach l'" art total" , like other romantic artists. It painted two versions of the Matin (Kunsthalle, Hamburg), but the other moments remained at the stage of drawing.

Runge was also one of the best German portraitists of its time; several of its portraits are visible in Hamburg.

In 1810, after several years of research on the colors and correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of a treaty on the colors, it publishes Die Farbenkugel (the sphere of the colors), in which it describes a diagram in three dimensions to organize all the colors, according to their nuance, their luminosity and their degree of saturation. The pure colors are laid out there around the equator, while the central axis represents the scale of values of the gray, energy of the black at the base with the white at the top. On the surface of the sphere, the colors are divided into going from the black towards the white while passing by the colors, and this, in seven stages.

Runge died of the Tuberculose in Hamburg.

Paintings and drawings

Of many self-portraits (1799, 1802,1806,1810)
Triumph of the Love ( Triumph of Amor ; 1800)
Die Heimkehr der Söhne (1800)
Kupferstich-Vignetten zu Ludwig Tiecks Minnelieder-Übersetzungen (1803)
Die Zeiten (Vier Kupferstichvorlagen, 1803)
Die Lehrstunde der Nachtigall (1803)
the mother with the Source ( Die Mutter year DER Which ; 1804)
Pauline im grünen Kleid (1804)
Us three (the painter, its wife and its brother Daniel) ( Wir drei ; 1805)
the calm one ( Die Ruhe auf der Flucht ; 1805-1806)
DER kleine Morgen (1808; Auschnitt put Engeln als Vorlage für eine Briefmarke populär)
DER große Morgen (1808, unfinished)
Arions Meerfahrt (1809)
Of innumerable cut out papers/zahlreiche Scherenschnitte

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