At the age of 14 he discovered his love for the arts after he had seen paintings by Edouard Manet and Max Liebermann. At this age he started spending his time in the countryside painting and drawing. When he finished school in 1908, he left the countryside to go to Hamburg to study with various painters including Arthur Siebelist. He then moved onto Berlin and undertook private studies with Wilhelm Mueller-Schoenfeld. He was also taught by Martin Brandenburg and Lovis Corinth. He then met Max Liebermann. Postel was very much influenced by Liebermann’s art and the surrounding artist movement, the Berlin Secession. Postel was able to exhibit his work within this movement first in 1912 in Berlin. He was drafted by the German military before the 1st World War and sustained tuberculosis. It took him quite a bit of time to recover from that disease. Beginning in 1922, Postel travelled extensively to England, Spain the Netherlands, Italy and France. He received further influences from Fauvism and Cubism. Both influences lead to a step-by-step move away from impressionist art. In 1924 Postel settled in London but still had a room in Berlin. In 1927 he had a room in Nr 213 Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin. After 1933 Postel’s mentor Max Liebermann fell in disgrace with the National Socialist regime and resigned as president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1932. Postel left Germany and spent the following years with travel to the Netherlands, Majorca and Maribor in present-day Slovenia. The fate of German artists in exile during the years 1933-1945 has been described in detail elsewhere .
Later life
In l936, Postel and his wife Nina went into exile and settled in London. Postel made a living with teaching and freelance painting. He spent the years between 1941 and 1944 in an internment camp for Germans in exile on the Isle of Man. Owing to the relatively benign conditions there, Postel was able to continue drawing and painting, both landscapes and portrait work. A number of his portraits from this period have survived although many of the sitters remain unknown to the present day. Back in London in 1944 he continued his teaching as well as freelance painting to make a living. This continued in the post war years. Postel’s first wife died in 1960. The following years saw him alternating between Germany and Britain. He had a number of exhibitions in Germany, France and the U.K. In 1972, he married his second wife Marjorie in Surrey. Boje Postel died on 6 January 1980 in Purley, Surrey.
Work
Boje Postel’s work focuses on portraits as well as nature and scenes from city life. Most of his works are drawings in black and white and portraits. A good example, a print of a portrait drawing of German journalist Maximilian Harden, is in the Harvard Art Collection. There are also quite a few water colours.
