The apprentice artist remembers
Katharina Krieger
Was it fate, a providential chance - how should I designate - the first meeting with Professor Will Hall? A small watercolor painting that I painted myself, an image of Saint Cecilia as a gift for the feast of Cecilia Conen, a singer who is part of the choir of Saint Joseph's Church, was the starting point. Mrs. Conen, who was enthusiastic about my work, offered me additional training. This corresponded to my own wish, as I had been looking for a private school for a long time.
I was recommended a family friend, a painter from Düsseldorf who was a regular visitor on Venlo Street, a master student of the Will Hall Academy. Hall agreed for me to present myself with some of my works.
And so, an appointment for my first training session was soon arranged in Will Hall's studio in Düsseldorf, naturally by the hand of the father who had to be convinced of his youngest daughter's new place of study. With great anticipation, I entered the studio on Schützenstrasse, and at first glance, I was overwhelmed: life-sized charcoal drawings with biblical scenes were fixed on a huge wooden partition that divided the studio into a living space and a storage area. I never forgot them. Behind this partition was a stack of artwork from thirty years, which, in 1943, had become a victim of incendiary bombs during the war, as well as the newly rented studio with my own works from a decade.
Similarly, I still remember very well the smells in Hall's studio at that time. It was a mixture of charred coal from the huge furnace, turpentine, cigar ash, and indefinable things. But for my senses attuned to the feast, it was as if I entered an old church, which often has a smell of incense and mold. The master was a strong personality who inspired immense respect by his presence and voice, so that for a long time, I dared not utter a word.
A very tolerant yet strict professor, solely focused on the craft and responsive to the talent of apprentice artists, soon tasked young Hall with challenging assignments, including thematic representations of classical literature such as the Odyssey or the Old Testament, with compositions the size of mural paintings, which began to make me nervous. But Will Hall did not tolerate feelings of inferiority; he expected a lot, critiqued, and only praised when it seemed appropriate to him. He was a teacher through and through, instructing until shortly before his death.
I remember: it was a week before his death that the seriously ill man struggled to get out of bed to still correct the work of his last private students. He was always interested in the artistic products of talented colleagues, even if from time to time he criticized them severely.
Critical thoughts and their consequences characterized his nature. He was a loner who stood apart from all artist groups, including the circle of Mother Ey. However, this consistency cost him the success that would have been his as one of the few early abstract painters in Germany. Take Flechtheim as an example: the young Düsseldorf gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim, a major collector of modernity at the time, wanted to promote Hall on the condition that he exclusively produced abstract works. Responding to this demand was impossible for Will Hall; he did not want to be tied to a gallery owner in this way. With his quick refusal, he pronounced his own judgment with great regret. Because at that time, as later, he only had just enough to live on.
I also remember the visit at the end of the war of an art dealer in Unterbach, when we were hungry. A car loaded with scarce food products was parked outside the door and was intended to be exchanged for paintings. "An absolute no, not with us," soon chased the merchant away. But I, the mistress of the house, felt a slight regret, putting the pot back on the stove with water, hoping for the miracle of a hearty soup. No, Will Hall was not an easy partner, but still, and perhaps despite everything, a deserving one. In any case, an educator - and still, despite everything, beneficial.
In the old days, the master first taught the students how to mix colors and prepare the projection screen before they could make other preparations on the instructor's work - many things that have become unnecessary today. For this, a colleague and I had the right, for educational reasons, as Hall called it, to take care of matters for the master that seemed tedious to him, such as turning the coffee grinder or buying cheap black pudding and cigarillos, which he never missed. These errands seemed to us girls at least as honorable as color mixing was to the apprentices of the old masters.
Käte Hall-Krieger, september 1991
Source: Translation from the exhibition catalog: WILL HALL 1897 – 1974, Clemens-Sels-Museum Neuss, October 6th – November 10th, 1991.
Self-portrait Katharina Hall Krieger, Oil on canvas, 1976
