Maria Caspar-Filser (7 August 1878 - 12 February 1968) was a Germanpainter. She lived and worked mainly in Munich.
Life and work
Maria Filser grew up in rural southwestern Germany. She studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She married the painter Karl Caspar, who had been a childhood friend and neighbour, in 1907 and took the name Caspar-Filser. In 1909 she became a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (German Association of Artists). In 1913, she was the only woman among the founding members of the artists' association Münchener Neue Secession. In 1925 she became the first German woman painter to be awarded the title of professor. She taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1928 she took part in the Venice Biennale. Caspar-Filser primarily painted flowers, gardens and landscapes, influenced equally by Impressionism and Expressionism.
The Nazis considered Caspar-Filser's paintings "degenerate" and began to persecute her. In 1933 she lost her professorship. In 1936, Caspar-Filser's paintings were removed from an exhibition at the Neue Pinakothek. In the wake of the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich on 19 July 1937, her artworks were removed from all museums and public collections and/or destroyed. That same year (some sources say the year was 1944, after her Munich house was destroyed in a bombing raid), due to Nazi hostility, she settled with her family in Brannenburg, where she lived until her death.
Her brother Benno Filser worked as a publisher in Augsburg and Munich.
An exhibition of her paintings was held, for the first time in over two decades, at Hohenkarpfen Art Museum, from March to July 2013. The exhibition was organized in cooperation with the city of Ochsenhausen and took place in the Ochsenhausen monastery.
References
Wirth, Günther, ed. (1993). Maria Caspar-Filser - Karl Caspar. Verfolgte Bilder [Maria Caspar-Filser - Karl Caspar. Persecuted images.] (in German). Albstadt: City Gallery. ISBN3-923644-53-1.
Wirth, Günther (1982). Kunst im deutschen Südwesten von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart [Art in southwest Germany from 1945 to the present] (in German). Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
"Maria Caspar-Filser" (in German). Rosenheim city archives. Retrieved January 26, 2014.
Simon, Stefan (April 2, 2013). "Hoch geehrt - aber die internationale Anerkennung bleibt aus" [Highly honored - but without international recognition]. Schwarzwälder Bote (in German).
