Heinrich Kamps (German, 1896-1954)

Heinrich Kamps was a German painter, teacher, and director of the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He studied in the art school in Krefeld and Hamburg but had to interrupt his art education as he was mobilised for military service in 1914. After sustaining an injury in 1916, Heinrich Kamps was not able to return to the front and instead completed a Drawing Teacher qualification at the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts.

Kamps continued to work as a teacher in the meantime exhibiting with the group Das Junge Rheinland (The Young Rheinland). He was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1925 and took over the management of the State Art School in Berlin-Schöneberg in 1929. While in Berlin he was also appointed senator of the Prussian Academy of the Arts.

Kamps's artistic and professional life became much more difficult with the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. He was labelled a protector of communism and cultural Bolshevism, his art was condemned as Degenerate Art, and because he refused to join the party he was unable to continue working at any art school.

In 1943, during the bombing of Berlin, Heinrich Kamps's studio was destroyed and with it, most of his work was lost.

After the war, Kamps returned to his duties as a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. His works have been included in various exhibitions, including the West German Artists' Association in Hagen in 1947 and the Lower Rhine Painting and Contemporary Art in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld in 1948. In 1952 the Duisburg Art Museum, now the Lehmbruck Museum, dedicated a solo exhibition to him.