Jentsch, Adolph (1888 – 1977)
Adolph Jentsch was of German descent, born in Dresden, Germany. Like many of his contemporaries, the cultured
and unworldly Orientalist, Jentsch fled Germany when Hitler’s Third Reich turned to persecuting artists. He joined
a cousin in Namibia in 1938 and stayed for the rest of his life. There he made a few lifelong friends, painted and
travelled extensively, settling near Windhoek in 1947.
Anton Hendriks, in 1958 commented on the painter: “Jentsch is not a modern artist; his large and simple
landscapes have the qualities of the simple landscapes. They are subtle, they do not shout, they are unobtrusive,
they do not intrude, they are quiet and therefor, they do not readily reveal themselves to those who are attuned
to modern noise”
In Namibia, Jentsch found the ideal working climate. His spirit responded to the vastness and silence of the desert
landscape. The sublimity of space, which figures so dominantly in Eastern mysticism, was here a tangible reality,
in the solitary desert landscape he felt free to meditate and to express his sense of the eternal.
Adolph Jentsch is considered by those familiar with the scene to have distilled the very essence of the natural
environment of South West Africa. Jentsch passed away in 1977 in Windhoek, SWA.
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