*Copyrights be damned*

["...Hermann Hesse turned to painting in his early 40çs at a time of emotional stress. Settling in the village of Montagnola in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland, Hesse was captivated by the landscape. His water colors reveal an Expressionist fervor, a Fauvist palette and a style that often touched base with Cubism..."]

"When I, after forty-one years of searching for a refuge, came to Montagnola for the first time and rented a small apartment with a balcony under which bloomed next to a few late Magnolias also a gigantic Judastree, I was a man in his ‚best yearsç and of mind to start again, although four years of war had left me defeated and bankrupt," Hesse wrote of Montagnola in Merian magazine in 1960.

["...At the time of his death, Hesse, in addition to his novels and collections of poems, had written 3,000 literary reviews and 35,000 personal letters. He had painted about 3,500 watercolors mostly of the places where he had lived and which were particularly dear to him..."]

"I have shown my appreciation to the old houses and stone roofs, the gardenwall, the chestnut trees, the near and faraway mountains, by painting, using hundreds of good sheets of drawing paper, many tubes of waterpaints and drawing-pencils."

Just when you think you "get" Hesse's art, along comes his great "Maskenball" painting. I think it is for his painting what Steppenwolf is for his fiction.

"Maskenball" ---? I have not seen this one. Is it on the Net somewhere?

Fascinating!
--------------------

èŸ one day I discovered an entirely new joy. Suddenly, at the age of forty I began to paint. Not that I considered myself a painter or intended to become one. But painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but red and blue onesŸî

èŸ in fact I would have long since given up on living if my first attempts at painting had not comforted me and saved me during that most difficult time in my lifeŸî

---Hermann Hesse

(Rich, THANKS!)

Here's the link to Hesse's "Maskenball": http://hesse-library.mokwon.ac.kr/pics2/Maskenball%20um%201926.JPG

And a link with (50) paintings: (takes a while to load but then you can enlarge by clicking on it.)

http://hesse-library.mokwon.ac.kr/aqua2.html

Here's a link to a paper about his paintings:
http://hesse.projects.ucsb.edu/projects/hesse/papers/schnei.PDF

More paintings / pictures at the same site but at gallery 1:

(http://hesse-library.mokwon.ac.kr/aqua1.html)

*Note: you might have to click refresh to make all the pictures load, and individual enlarged loading may take some time.

ENJOY!

thank you for the linked insightful article.

If you love Hesse, I would look into Ryokan. Athough I cannot defend this connection.

Rich,

Maskenball is quite intriguing! What's your interpretation of it?

I see that he's got a heart in there, with everything else... What do you make of that? And those round things, are they doughnuts??? :-))

Who knows? ;-) I'm not sure if I'm really up to interpreting this painting, but in any event I think it shows how much that one costume ball affected him. You can sit and look at one idyllic painting of his after another, for hours, and then suddenly turn the page to Maskenball and...bam!...

In regards to painting, I was very surprise to hear Hesse say that it had saved him. I guess I had seen a few of his previous paintings here and there and saw the houses, etc., and didn't think too much further on the subject.

And so I was always impressed with him (with his journey), because he didn't really 'lose it' in a major way, and without any vices to keep him sane. It had almost made me believe that he was beyond 'human'... You can't dance the Dance and go barefoot all yourlife and then produce the works that he did without something to help. And so I was always looking for that amulet of his, so to speak, and then there it was -paintings! And Maskenball really said it all for me, what he was carrying around in his head and how he approached things... Quite amazing, that Hermann Hesse...