Albert Birkle was born in Berlin in 1900, first son of an artist family in Charlottenburg. He learned decorative painting in his father’s shop after World War I, then studied at the Berlin Academy from 1920 to 1925 under Arthur von Kampf. By 1924 he was already the youngest member of the Berlin Secession, chaired by none other than Max Liebermann. He turned down a professorship at Königsberg to paint church murals instead. In 1932 he moved to Salzburg, and later became an Austrian citizen in 1946.
His work sits somewhere between New Objectivity and Expressionism, with a dark, ambivalent edge that makes you stop and stare. He painted expressive heads with exaggerated features, often grotesque but never cruel. He was interested in mystery, in the unclear, in people who didnt fit the healthy athletic mold. His subjects look like they carry secrets. The backgrounds are filled with steam engines and crossing signals and alpine landscapes. He was a chronicler of his times, he said so himself, and his paintings feel like documents from a world that was already slipping away.
He once said, “I am only interested in the mysterious, not-clear among people and things”. That quote sits right in the middle of his whole career. He didnt want the obvious. He wanted the thing that made you uneasy, the face you couldnt quite read, the story that didnt resolve itself. His painting “Der Bahnwärter” from 1927 shows a railway worker with giant hands and a vacant stare, standing next to a little girl with enormous eyes, a black locomotive rolling toward them in the background. You dont know what happens next. Thats the point.
Q: Was Birkle affected by the Nazis?
A: Yes. In 1937, several of his paintings were confiscated as “degenerate” and removed from an exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich. He represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1936, but that didnt protect him. He volunteered for labor service to avoid the military, then ended up as a war painter and correspondent anyway. He survived, but his work was never quite the same after.
After the war, he turned to glass painting and became a pioneer of the modern dalle de verre technique, which he kept developing throughout the 1950s and 60s. He created religious window cycles, but even then he used biblical stories to make critical comments about the present. His late work went back to Expressionism, revisiting motifs from the 1920s and 40s. He died in Salzburg in 1986, at 85 years old. Not a household name, but among people who know, he matters.
Q: What should I look for in a Birkle painting?
A: Look at the hands and the faces. He put special emphasis on both. The hands tell you about the work, the faces tell you about the weight they carry. Also look for the mystery. He didnt want to give you answers. He wanted to leave you standing there, a little unsettled, not quite sure what you just saw. Thats the feeling that stays with you.
