The Artwork of Ernst Thoms
Born in November of 1896 in the Weser River city of Nienburg, Ernst Thoms was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity movement. Mainly a self-taught artist, he is known for his Surrealist figures, landscapes, still life and portrait paintings, and theatrical sets.
New Objectivity began in Germany during the 1920s as a reaction against the self-involvement and romantic longings of Expressionism. Expressionism had abandoned nature and artistic tradition and centered itself around emotional experience and inner turmoil in reaction to the modern world and the creation of personal identity. New Objectivity was one of several movements critical of expressionism; it professed both objectivity and utility, a return to artistic tradition, and a straight-forward approach to art in all its fields.
After serving as an apprentice painter between 1911 and 1914, Ernst Thoms studied for a few months at the Hanover School for the Decorative and Applied Arts before he was called to military service in World War I. At the start of the war, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in England for five years until 1919. Released at the war’s end, Thoms returned to the Hanover School in 1920 where he studied under painter and graphic artist Fritz Burger-Mühlfeld, known largely for his later abstract works. While studying at Hanover, Thoms became acquainted with painter Grethe Jürgens, also a student of Burger-Mühlfeld, and her circle of New Objectivity artists.
In the 1920s with reparations for the war and tariffs on its products, Germany’s economy reached a point of super inflation where millions of marks were worthless. Thoms survived by working as a house painter. However in 1924, he found work as a painter of advertisements and theatrical stage sets at Hanover’s opera house. Thoms had his first show in 1926 at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover. The Kestner Society, a Hanover art institution to promote the arts, gave him a solo exhibition in 1928 at Berlin’s Galerie Neumann- Nierendorf. Thoms also showed work at exhibitions in Amsterdam, Stockholm and other German cities between 1928 and 1932.
As a New Objectivity artist, Ernst Thoms worked in an unsentimental style that was often imbued with lyrical or fanciful qualities. His works presented ordinary and undramatic subject matter; however having been influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico, Thoms inserted elements of magic realism within the spaces of his scenes. An example is his 1926 “Junk Shop”, an interior scene inhabited by three customers who are surrounded by a myriad of artifacts set at different angles. Thoms’ 1926 “Dachboden (Attic)” is another interior scene that is composed of angular spaces which contain either objects or disclose other locations. “Dachboden” was included in his first exhibition and was purchased by the Hanover State Museum.
In 1931, Thoms joined the Hanover Secession. one of a wave of secessions that constituted a break between avant-garde artists and conservative standard bearers of European academic and official art. The Vienna Secession, which favored the Art Nouveau style, remains the most influential of the various secessions; it was inspired by the 1892 Munich and 1898 Berlin secessions. During the second World War, Thoms was conscripted by the German Reich to military service and served from 1939 to 1940. During the war, both his house and studio were struck by Allied bombing; all of the works that were still his personal possessions were destroyed..
After the end of the second World War, Ernst Thoms continued his painting and returned to Hanover in 1950. He was given a retrospective of his work on his sixtieth birthday by the Kunstverein Hanover, one of the oldest and most renowned art associations in Germany. In 1964, Thoms was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Lower-Saxony Order of Merit. Established in 1815, the Lower Saxony Order of Merit recognizes the subjects of the Kingdom of Saxony for distinguished civic service and virtue; the Grand Cross is the highest of the three classes of crosses.
Beginning in 1968, Thoms suffered from deteriorating eyesight but continued to paint into his last years. He died at the age of eighty-six in May of 1983 at Wietzen near his birthplace of Nienburg. Thoms is buried in the Kräher Weg in Nienburg/Weser Cemetery.
Top Insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Selbstbildnis (Self Portrait)”, 1926, Oil on Cardboard, 35.7 x 27 cm, Private Collection
Second Insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Im Lager”, 1917, Gouache on Paper, Museum Nienburg/Weser
Third insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Fischerdorf in Schweden”, 1931, Mixed Media Ink Watercolor, Museum Nienburg/Weser
Bottom Insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Selbstbildnis (Self Portrait)”, 1932, Oil on Canvas, 29.4 x 25.5 cm, Private Collection