Henri Bing
French, 1888 – 1965
Follow
The French painter, draughtsman and lithographer Henri Bing was only seventeen when he joined the staff of the German illustrated magazines Jugend and Simplicissimus. Over the next ten years some nine hundred of his drawings would be published.
Records show that by 1905 Bing was living in Munich and a regular guest at the Cafe Stefanie in Munich’s thriving bohemian quarter, where he mixed with many of the leading artistic personalities of the time. Bing received an income from royalties generated by the publication of his caricatures in Jugend and Simplicissimus and supplemented it by selling the original drawings. In 1912, two leading Munich art dealers – Franz Josef Brakl and Hans Goltz – began to market his work. When war broke out he was interned as an enemy alien. This marked an abrupt end to his artistic career. After the war in 1920 he returned to Paris where he forged a new career as an art dealer specializing in modernism.