Carlo Mense was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, associated at various times with Rhenish Expressionism and New Objectivity

New Objectivity

The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...

.

Mense was born in Rheine

Rheine

Rheine is a city in the district of Steinfurt in Westphalia, Germany. It is the largest city in the district and the location of Rheine Air Base.-Geography:Rheine is located on the river Ems, approx. north of Münster, approx...

. He studied with Peter Janssen

Peter Janssen

Peter Janssen was a German historical painter. He was born at Düsseldorf, son of the engraver Theodor Janssen , by whom he was first instructed before studying at the Academy under Karl Sohn and Bendemann...

 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...

 from 1906 to 1908, and then with Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth was a German painter and printmaker whose mature work realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism....

 at the Akademie der Künste

Akademie der Künste

The Akademie der Künste, Berlin is an arts institution in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Prussian Academy of Arts, an academic institution where members could meet and discuss and share ideas...

 in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in 1909. In 1913, he co-organized (with August Macke

August Macke

August Macke was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter . He lived during a particularly innovative time for German art which saw the development of the main German Expressionist movements as well as the arrival of the successive avant-garde movements which...

) the first exhibition of the Rhenish Expressionists in Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

. In 1914, he spent some time at the artists' colony at Ascona

Ascona

Ascona is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.It is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore.The town is a popular tourist destination, and holds a yearly jazz festival, the Ascona Jazz Festival....

, where he met Georg Schrimpf

Georg Schrimpf

Georg Schrimpf , was a German painter and graphic artist. Along with Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, Schrimpf is broadly acknowledged as a main representative of the art trend Neue Sachlichkeit , which developed in the 1920s as a counter-movement to Expressionism and Abstraction...

 and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity.Davringhausen was born in Aachen. Mostly self-taught as a painter, he began as a sculptor, studying briefly at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts before participating in a group exhibition at Flechtheim's gallery in...

.

From 1921 to 1925, Mense lived in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, where he became associated with the New Objectivity style, in particular being heavily influenced by Schrimpf, as well as by the Italian Valori Plastici

Valori plastici

Valori plastici was an Italian magazine published in Rome in Italian and French from 1918 to 1922, edited by painter and art collector Mario Broglio and focused on aesthetic ideals and metaphysical artwork...

 group, with whom he exhibited in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 in 1922. In 1925, he was appointed professor at the Kunstakademie Breslau. Alexander Kanoldt

Alexander Kanoldt

Alexander Kanoldt was a German magic realist painter and one of the artists of the New Objectivity.Kanoldt was born in Karlsruhe. His father was the painter Edmond Kanoldt, a late practitioner of the Nazarene style...

, also associated with New Objectivity, was appointed professor at the same time, and the two attempted to establish a center of New Objectivity there, but came into conflict with the mainly avant garde circle centered around Oskar Moll. Mense remained a professor at Breslau until 1932; soon thereafter, his works were branded degenerate art

Degenerate art

Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...

 by the Nazis, and 34 works were seized and destroyed.

He lived from 1945 in Bad Honnef

Bad Honnef

Bad Honnef is a spa town in Germany near Bonn in the Rhein-Sieg district, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the border of the neighbouring state Rhineland-Palatinate...

, and died in 1965 in Königswinter

Königswinter

Königswinter is a town and summer resort in the Rhein-Sieg district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite to Bonn, at the foot of the Siebengebirge.- Main sights :...

. He was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz

Bundesverdienstkreuz

The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...

in 1961.