August Frederick Biehle, Jr.

Place: Cleveland

Born: 1885

Death: 1979

Biography:

August Frederick Biehle, Jr. (1885–1979) was an American Modernist painter. He trained as an apprentice decorator with his father for the firm of Rorimer Brooks and went to Europe in 1903 to study painting in Paris and at the Kunstgeverbeschule in Munich. Absorbing the work of the Blue Rider, German Expressionist, and French Fauve schools, he developed a distinctive style of flat decorative patterns. Upon his return to Cleveland in 1905 Biehle went to work for the Sherwin-Williams Company. He continued his studies at night with F.C. Gottwald and returned to Munich in 1910 to study at the Royal Academy. Back in Cleveland in 1912, he was persuaded by Carl Moellman and William Sommer to become a lithographer for Otis Lithography and Continental Lithography Corp., where he remained from 1913-52. Married in 1921 to the former Mary Theresa Wessler, Biehle continued with his own painting, studying with Henry Keller at his Berlin Hts. summer school and exhibiting with Frank Wilcox, Paul Travis, and Sommer. Known for landscapes, he also did portraits and painted murals for the WPA. By 1955 he was working abstractly. Biehle's paintings were so frequently selected (25 yrs.) for the May Show, that he was awarded Emeritus Nonjury Entrant status, allowing him to bypass the normal competition.