157 Paul Mathias Padua: Benito Mussolini, 1941
Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower right: “Padua 1941”. On renewed stretcher frame and in gilded contemporary stucco frame.
Significant half-portrait of the Italian Duce - Benito Mussolini - in thinker's pose with closed eyes.
The portrait shows the masterfully executed contrast of light and shadow typical of this artist.
103 x 83 cm
Paul Mathias Padua (* November 15, 1903 in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary; † August 22, 1981 in Rottach-Egern) was a German painter. He felt committed to the tradition of the realist Wilhelm Leibl, who was highly esteemed by Adolf Hitler, and was extremely successful as an artist during the National Socialist era.
Although Paul Mathias Padua was born in Salzburg, he grew up in impoverished circumstances with his grandparents in Geiselhöring and Straubing in Lower Bavaria. At the age of nine he lost his father. Later Padua moved to Murnau and Munich. Padua discontinued his academic training early and concentrated on his painting. Padua's early work is essentially influenced by the works of the painter Wilhelm Leibl, his later work was increasingly shaped by the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). In 1922 Padua became a member of the Munich Artists' Association. In the following years Padua's paintings were regularly exhibited. In 1928 he received the Georg Schicht Prize and in 1930 the Albrecht Dürer Prize of the City of Nuremberg. In the 1930s Padua's fame increased, so that he exhibited on numerous trips outside the Munich region and abroad in Europe.
Padua's career as a young artist devoted to traditional art was rather unusual, since he had not completed academic training. He was recognized as an artist in the Third Reich and was represented at the Great German Art Exhibitions 1938–1944 in the House of German Art in Munich with 23 works, including still lifes and female nudes. In 1937 and 1940 he received the Lenbach Prize of the City of Munich for portraits (1937/Clemens Krauss) and in 1938 the prize for the most beautiful child portrait. Those portrayed include Franz Lehár and Gerhart Hauptmann. In 1938 he created the fresco painting (farmers in the traditional costume of their home region in the Bavarian Oberland) on the display side of the Weilheim Highland Hall, a livestock auction hall built in 1937/38, which has since also served the city of Weilheim as an event hall and which was added in 2017 as an individual monument to the monument list of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection.
At the beginning of World War II, Padua was drafted into a propaganda company as a war artist. After a slight wound during the Western Campaign, he was sent back to Germany in May 1940. Until 1943 he painted some of the best-known pictures of German NS propaganda art, such as “The Führer Speaks,” in which Adolf Hitler is propagated as the embodiment of the National Socialist conception of religion. The painting “May 10, 1940,” which glorifies the beginning of the Western Campaign, is stylistically oriented toward the realism of the 19th century and represents, in terms of art politics, the people's community and the Führer principle. In 1943 Padua was represented with three works in the exhibition “Young Art in the German Reich” at the Künstlerhaus Vienna. Among them “Still Life with Meat,” “Still Life with Flowers,” and “Flower Stand.” In 1943 Padua moved to St. Wolfgang in Austria. At the exhibition German Artists and the SS 1944 in Salzburg, his painting “The Soldier on Leave” was exhibited. In 1944 Padua was on the Gottbegnadeten List (God-Gifted List) of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Nothing is known about his denazification in Austria. In 1951 Padua returned to Germany. He acquired from Else Pfeifer (1879–1962), the widow of Max Pfeifer (1875–1942) – son of the sugar industrialist (Pfeifer & Langen) Valentin Pfeifer – a house in Rottach-Egern. Here in the Tegernsee Valley he then opened his own “Gallery by the Lake.” As a portrait painter he painted Friedrich Flick and Helmut Horten, Makarios III, Otto Hahn, Herbert von Karajan, Josef Ertl, and Franz Josef Strauß. From 1960 Padua regularly traveled to Portugal to the fishing town of Nazaré. He died on August 22, 1981 in Rottach-Egern from the consequences of a stroke; he is buried there in the cemetery at the Protestant Resurrection Church.
Exhibitions (selection)
1924: Munich Art Exhibition in the Glaspalast
1925: Munich Art Exhibition in the Glaspalast
1927: Munich Art Exhibition in the Glaspalast
1930: German Art Exhibition Munich in the Glaspalast
1931: Munich Art Exhibition in the Glaspalast
1932: Art Exhibition Munich in the Deutsches Museum (Library Building)
1934: Great Munich Art Exhibition in the Neue Pinakothek
1935: Munich Artists. Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin
1935: Munich Art, Special Exhibitions in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich
1935: Great Munich Art Exhibition. Neue Pinakothek.
1935: Art Show German Masters. Municipal Exhibition Building Mathildenhöhe
1936: Heroic Art. Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus in Munich
1936: The Streets of Adolf Hitler. Munich
1937: Animal Art Exhibition. Exhibition Building Tiergartenstraße
1937: Figure and Composition in Picture and on the Wall. Neue Pinakothek in Munich
1937: Munich Annual Exhibition. Neue Pinakothek in Munich
1937: Of German Character. Art Exhibition Baden-Baden. Exhibition Building Lichtentaler Allee
1936: Portraits of German Men, Goldsmith Art, Love Rings. House of Art in Berlin
1938: Kunsthalle Hamburg
1938: German Painters of the Present. House of Art in Heidelberg
1938: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1938: Munich Art Exhibition. Maximilianeum
1939: Munich Art Exhibition. Maximilianeum
1939: The Farmer and His World. Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig
1939: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1940: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1940: Munich Art Exhibition. Maximilianeum
1940: Great Berlin Art Exhibition in the House of Art in Berlin
1941: Munich Art Exhibition. Maximilianeum
1941: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1942: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1942: Great Berlin Art Exhibition in the Nationalgalerie
1943: Contemporary Artists in Portraits of Painting and Sculpture. Municipal Moritzburg Museum
1943: Contemporary Munich Artists. Cologne
1943: Exhibition “Young Art in the German Reich” in the Vienna Künstlerhaus
1943: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1944: Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich
1944: German Artists and the SS 1944 in Salzburg
Significant painting and excellently suited for a museum exhibition on the theme of art in the German Reich 1933 - 1945.
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