Adolf Dietrich

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Adolf Dietrich's birthplace, workhouse and home in Berlingen

Adolf Dietrich (born November 9, 1877 in Berlingen ; † June 4, 1957 ) was a Swiss painter who is assigned to the New Objectivity and at the same time was a main representative of naive painting .

Life

Adolf Dietrich was born on November 9, 1877 in a small, modest house in Berlingen, Canton Thurgau , as the seventh child of Heinrich Dietrich and Dorothea. Core born. As a little boy he collected a lot and tried to imitate and draw everything. From 1885 to 1893 he attended primary school. He was a good and hardworking student. His teacher recognized his talent for drawing and encouraged it. He recommended to his parents that their son should do an apprenticeship as a lithographer. But the family was poor and Adolf had to learn a trade where he earned more. So he started to work in a jersey factory in Berlingen. On Sundays he painted and drew passionately. From 1896 to 1910 he worked at home as a machine knitter. He was more and more fascinated by nature with its secrets and wonders. He started a first sketchbook and a dozen animal watercolors followed. In 1902 Dietrich became friends with Friedrich Neeser, an apprentice baker who also painted. They spent Sundays together in nature. Neeser encouraged the serious and somewhat anxious Adolf not to give up painting.

In 1903 Dietrich drew his first self-portrait with charcoal. On behalf of his brother, who lived in Ludwigshafen am Rhein , he painted a portrait of his parents. His mother died that same year. From then on, Dietrich lived alone with his father in the small house in Berlingen. Working from home on the knitting machine helped to cope with the daily worries of existence. For technical reasons, however, he soon gave up working from home and earned his living as a forest worker. In 1913 he exhibited his pictures for the first time in Konstanz (D) in the Wessenberghaus. This was followed by further exhibitions in various galleries in Germany.

Adolf Dietrich: Ship pier in winter

His father died in 1918. This loss bothered him hard. But he soon overcame this crisis and was discovered by the art dealer Herbert Tannenbaum . This enabled Dietrich to exhibit at various locations in Germany. He tried to make Dietrich known in Switzerland and soon obtained approval for exhibitions in Zurich (1942) and Schaffhausen (1933, 1952). From 1924 Dietrich was able to make a living from his painting.

In 1937 Adolf Dietrich met Hans Baumgartner . This portrayed him several times for the magazine DU and thus helped him to achieve an international breakthrough. As a result, he was able to participate in exhibitions in Paris , London and New York .

Only in 1941 did his home canton Thurgau acquire a picture of him. From 1942, the demand for his pictures became so great that he copied his own pictures and promised several people the same picture at the same time. He painted until his death; he died on June 4, 1957 in his house in Berlingen and has an honorary grave in the cemetery there. The lawyer Hans Buck, the author of Adolf Dietrich as a draftsman , made sure that Dietrich wrote a will and in it thought of a future Thurgau art museum.

painting

Adolf Dietrich: Balbo, lying on the meadow

Motives: Adolf Dietrich has been fascinated by nature and animals since childhood. He owned many stuffed animals that he drew. He often drew his garden or Lake Constance and also painted portraits and various still lifes .

Style: Adolf Dietrich had no academic training as a painter. You can tell that, for example, the perspective is often misrepresented in his pictures. He always drew very precisely, which makes his pictures very realistic. Art historians assign his style to naive painting on the one hand and New Objectivity on the other .

Painting style: At the beginning Adolf Dietrich made pencil drawings in his sketchbooks on his hikes, 18 are still preserved today. Around 1929 he began to take black and white photographs, several thousand photos are still available. He never painted in nature, but always made only a sketch, which he then painted in the house from memory with color. He never used an easel and always painted his pictures in his living room on the table, often in poor light. His techniques were gouache , watercolor , charcoal drawing, oil painting, pencil sketch.

Image carrier: In the beginning he painted on cardboard, later on wood, but only rarely on canvas. For this reason, quite a few images are in a sensitive state.

Well-known paintings

  • Girl with cockchafer, 1923. Private property.
  • Pfeffervogel, 1927. Wessenberg Galerie Konstanz.
  • Evening mood on the Untersee, 1932
  • Self-portrait, 1932. Thurgau Art Museum , Ittingen Charterhouse.
  • Garden with geraniums by the window, 1933. Private property.
  • Ship sinking off Berlingen, 1935. Berlingen community. (Shows the boiler explosion of the Rhine Falls in 1869).
  • Girl with a Dog, 1935
  • Blackbirds, 1936
  • View through trees to Berlingen, 1938. Private property.
  • Balbo lying on the meadow, 1955. Thurgau Art Museum, Ittingen Charterhouse.

Commemoration

Museums

  • Adolf Dietrich House: The Adolf Dietrich House at Seestrasse 26 in Berlingen was converted into a museum by the Thurgauer Kunstgesellschaft. It was the house where Adolf Dietrich was born, worked and lived. The painting room on the upper floor of the house has remained unchanged. On the ground floor there is a small documentation about the artist's life and work with a small museum shop.
Dietrich ornamental garden
  • A freely accessible ornamental garden is located on a small, free piece of land opposite the Adolf Dietrich House . A board at the adjacent birthplace of the Swiss politician Johann Konrad Kern informs the visitors as follows:
“The restoration of this stately ornamental garden was made possible with the help of the 'pro Dietrich Garten' working group, the Kern family, the 'Brockenstube Berlingen' and generous donations from cantons and communities, institutions, companies and private individuals from near and far. The garden was redesigned in the summer of 1996 based on paintings by Adolf Dietrich. It is privately owned and is under the patronage of the Berlingen Traffic and Beautification Association. "
  • Thurgau Art Museum , Ittingen Charterhouse, Warth / TG: The entire estate of Dietrich went to the Thurgau Art Society in 1957. It is archived and a group of works is always on display.

In addition, the Kunsthaus Zürich , the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen , the Kunstmuseum Winterthur , the museum in the warehouse in St. Gallen and numerous private collectors also own works by Dietrich.

Movie

  • Adolf Dietrich, painter 1877–1957. Documentary. Direction and screenplay: Friedrich Kappeler , Switzerland 1990, duration 90 minutes.
  • Sky blue - grass green. Ad. Dietrich 1877-1957. Documentary. Direction and screenplay: Robert Weiss , SF DRS 1977, duration 50 minutes.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manuel Gasser: Adolf Dietrich, 1877–1957. In: du , 18, 1958. In it Baumgartner's photographs: The painter in his overgrown garden by the lake , 1956. and Adolf Dietrich at the window of his bedroom , c. 1955 / The painter and his model , approx. 1941. In the Swiss Electronic Library, accessed on February 22, 2020.
  2. ^ Thurgau yearbook: Hans Buck. Retrieved April 5, 2020 .
  3. ^ Adolf Dietrich website of the Thurgauische Kunstgesellschaft with paintings ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Adolf Dietrich: Balbo lying on the meadow , on kunstmuseum.tg.ch, accessed on March 21, 2020
  5. ^ Adolf Dietrich-Haus , on kunstgesellschaft-tg.ch, accessed on March 21, 2020

literature

  • Heinrich Ammann : Adolf Dietrichs self-portraits. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 41, 1966, pp. 36–52. ( e-periodica.ch )
  • Heinrich Ammann: Adolf Dietrich and the forest. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 45, 1970, pp. 67–81. ( e-periodica.ch )
  • Heinrich Ammann: Adolf Dietrich. Huber, Frauenfeld 1977.
  • Heinrich Ammann and Christoph Vögele: Adolf Dietrich - The paintings 1877–1957. Wolfau-Druck Rudolf Mühlemann, Weinfelden 1994.
  • Beat Brechbühl : Foot trip with Adolf Dietrich. Narrative. Nagel and Kimche, Zurich 1999.
  • Hans Buck: Adolf Dietrich as a draftsman. Rotapfel, Zurich / Stuttgart 1964.
  • Urs O. Keller: Adolf Dietrich. An artist's life by the lake. Huber, Frauenfeld 2002.
  • Ernst Nägeli : Alfred Dietrich. In : Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 33, 1958, pp. 7–12 ( e-periodica )
  • Art Museum Thurgau : Adolf Dietrich Painter - Master Painter, A Glossary. Niggli, Sulgen / Zurich 2002.
  • Art Museum Thurgau: Adolf Dietrich - His subjects. His life. 1994.
  • Kunstmuseum Winterthur , Landesmuseum Oldenburg: Adolf Dietrich and the New Objectivity in Germany. 1994.
  • Margot Riess: The painter and woodcutter Adolf Dietrich. Rascher, Zurich 1937.
  • Willi Tobler: I wouldn't have swapped with any king. The life of the painter Adolf Dietrich. seeds, Frauenfeld 2020.
  • Artist in the workshop-Adolf Dietrich . In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 36, Issue 7, 1949, pp. 239–242.

Web links

Commons : Adolf Dietrich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Dietrich, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlingen
DATE OF DEATH June 4th 1957
Place of death Berlingen