Albert Fessler (1908 - 1978)

Albert Fessler, also known as Alberto Fessler (* March 11, 1908 in Königsbach) was a German painter and art teacher. He lived in Germany, Venezuela and Spain.

At the age of six Albert Fessler moved to Pforzheim, the hometown of his father Franz Karl Fessler. The father worked as an enamel painter in his own jewelery factory in the Güterstrasse. At his father's request Albert Fessler learned at the age of 14 years the profession of an engraver of steel. He also attended the Goldsmith School and the Grand Ducal Baden Kunstgewerbeschule in Pforzheim.

Next Albert Fessler studied at the private painting school of Ludwig Wilhelm Plock in Karlsruhe. He visited the local Academy of Fine Arts (ABK) with Hermann Goebel and Karl Dillinger and the ABK Munich with Peter Kallmann.

In the late 1920s Albert Fessler worked and lived briefly in the Grötzinger Malerkolonie together with the artists Paul Rein, Karl Martin Graff, Friedrich Bach, Hugo Bickel and the artist couple Hans and Else Winkler Dentz.

1931 Albert Fessler stayed for three months in Paris to study the old masters at the Louvre to consolidate his technical skills by copying their paintings.

1932 Albert Fessler studied at the ABK in Barcelona. There he met Salvador Dali, with whom he was in the same artist association "Circolo artistico". The pictures of this period were based on the academic models and the late impressionists.

At the beginning of 1933, Albert Fessler lived and worked in Lucerne in Switzerland. There he lived in Mariahilfgasse in a small attic room in modest conditions.

Albert Fessler left Spain in 1936 and moved to Munich.

During the Second World War, Albert Fessler documented with his pictures the horrors and effects of the war.

He taught from 1945 to 1948 at the Munich ABK. One of his students was the painter and graphic artist Helmuth Volkwein (1920 - 2004).

1948 Albert Fessler emigrated to South America. From 1954 to 1956 he was a lecturer at the ABK in Caracas / Venezuela.Then he returned to Germany and lived again in Königsbach and in Selva de Mar in northern Spain.

Albert Fessler was a friend of the Pforzheim Art painter and photographer Gertrude Offner (1921-2008), which he impressively portrayed as a young woman.

1957 Albert Fessler created a sunny painting studio in Selva de Mar in an old fisherman's house. The proximity to the lively domizil de fiesta of Salvador Dali gave the young family with two small children so many sleepless nights.

Between 1971 and 1974, Albert Fessler was staying with his family exclusively in his Spanish home in Selva de Mar. Health problems caused Albert Fessler 1974 to return to Königsbach.

In the last years of his life Albert Fessler also worked as a successful art teacher for seniors.

Albert Fessler's body of work includes still lifes, portraits (woman from Madrid exhibited in 1940 at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich), landscapes and colorful impressions of rural ports on the Mediterranean.

He also painted a series of paintings in 1944, showing the burning and destroyed Munich. His works are on display in the Diocesan Museum Freising, et al the ruins of the Basilica of Our Lady 1944.

In the Munich City Museum you can see Munich Central Station before 1944, the interior of the Frauenkirche, Odeonsplatz, the Army Museum, the old city hall, the victory monument, the burning Munich as seen overlooking the Karlstor after it’s destruction in 1944.

In the Museum of Military History in Vienna in Room VII a picture of Albert Fessler is exhibited.