Max Brüning

Born: 1887 in Delitzsch, Germany.

Died: 1968 in Lindau, Germany.

Max Bruning was a German artist. He painted two portraits of Crowley (one alone and one with Bertha Busch) in 1931.

Max Bruning's eventful life is almost as compelling as his art. He attended the Leipzig Academy of Art at the young age of fifteen and studied both painting and printmaking techniques there under Alois Kolb and Peter Halm. Upon completion of his studies, Bruning contributed drawings to the periodical, Ex-Libris (1910). He also first exhibited his art in Munich during that year. In the First World War (1914-1918), Max Bruning was commissioned as a war artist. Shortly after the war ended he settled in Berlin and began to create the wonderfully provoking engravings for which he is famous. As the Weimar era became increasingly threatened by the rise of the Nazis, however, Max Bruning moved to the Tyrol Mountains in Austria. He remained there during the entire Second World War. In 1943, Allied bombing attacks upon Berlin destroyed most of the remaining original copper plates of Max Bruning's engravings. When the war ended in 1945, Bruning, a classified German citizen, was forced to leave Austria. He settled in Lindau in the following year and opened a studio. Most of his art from this period is landscape paintings and watercolors.

Max Bruning's art dealt almost entirely with the many elements of physical desire. During the 1920's his watercolors were reproduced as 'naughty' postcards and imagery for advertising. He dedicated his more serious talents, however, to the creation of original etchings and drypoint engravings, some of which were finished with extra layers of colors. "Haunted", for example, contains two extra printings of green and yellow lines and tones which increases the psychological intensity of this amazing work of art.

Max Bruning portrait of

Aleister Crowley

circa 1931

Max Bruning portrait of

Aleister Crowley &

Bertha Busch

 circa 1931