Arnold Böcklin

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Image:Arnold Böcklin 006.jpg Image:Arnoldboecklin.jpg Image:Wiki bocklin.JPG Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was a symbolist Swiss painter.

He studied at Düsseldorf where he became a friend of Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach. Originally a landscape painter, his travels through Brussels, Zurich, Geneva and Rome, exposed him to classical and Renaissance art, and the Mediterranean landscape. These new influences brought allegorical and mythological figures into his compositions. In 1866 he resided at Bâle, in 1871 in Munich, in 1885 in Hottingen (Switzerland) and at the end of his life in Fiesole.

Influenced by Romanticism his painting is symbolist within the Art Noveau style. His pictures portray mythological, fantastical figures along classical architecture constructions (revealing often an obssession with death) creating a strange, phantasy world.

Böcklin is best known for his five versions of The Isle of the Dead, which partly evokes the English Cemetery, Florence, close to his studio and where his baby daughter Maria had been buried.

Otto Weisert designed an Art Nouveau typeface in 1904 and named it “Arnold Böcklin” in his honor. The design uses tendrils hanging from many of the capital letters and across the top of the minuscule letters v through y.

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