Carlos Grethe (25 September 1864, Montevideo, Uruguay – 2 February 1913, Nieuwpoort, Belgium) was an Uruguayan-born German painter and academician.

Life

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Grethe, who was living in Hamburg from the age of five, graduated from the Fine Arts School of Paul Düyffcke at the Karlsruher Kunstakademie (from 1882 to 1884 and from 1889 to 1890), as well as the Parisian Académie Julian from 1884 to 1886, which he interrupted for an almost one-year sea voyage to Mexico from 1888 to 1889. He followed up by teaching at the Karlsruhe Kunstgewerbeschule and the academy there, and thereafter, in 1899, at the Kgl. Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart until his premature death. Grethe, from 1894 onward, was a member of the Munich Secession, and was also involved in the founding of the Karlsruher Künstlerbundes (1896), the Stuttgarter Künstlerbundes, the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart (1901) and the Verein Württembergischer Kunstfreunde. Grethe is a prominent representative of his subject in the field of man and the sea, as well as the coast and the port by the turn of the century. His artistic development took place from modern realism at the beginning of his creative phase to a rather impressionistic theme in his later works.

Literature

• Hamburger Ansichten – Maler sehen die Stadt. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Wienand Verlag, S. 186
• Ingrun Stocke: Carlos Grethe: der Maler des Meeres; 1864 - 1913; Leben und Werk. Kromsdorf: VDG Weimar 2008 ISBN 978-3-89739-602-9