Franz Roh

Who was Franz Roh?

Franz Roh, was a German historian, photographer, and art critic. He is perhaps best known for his 1925 book Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei he coined the term magic realism.

Roh was born in Apolda, Germany. He studied at universities in Leipzig, Berlin, and Basel. In 1920, he received his Ph. D. in Munich for a work on Dutch paintings of the 17th century. As a photographer and critic, he absolutely hated photographs that were to be like a painting, charcoal, or drawings. During the Nazi regime, he was isolated and briefly put in jail for his book Foto-Auge; he used his jail time he used to write the book Der Verkannte Künstler: Geschichte und Theorie des kulturellen Mißverstehens. After the war, in 1946, he married art historian Juliane Bartsch. He died in Munich.