Adolf Lazi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adolf Lazi (born December 22, 1884 in Munich , † January 9, 1955 in Stuttgart ) was a German sculptor and photographer . In 1950 he founded the “International School for Higher Photography - Lazi”, also known as the “Lazi School”.

Life

Adolf Lazi began his apprenticeship with the architect and sculptor for religious art Karl Heinrich Seboldt in 1896 . As a painter and sculptor, he was accepted into the United Workshops for Home Decor in 1900.

Photography, practiced since the age of fourteen, made Adolf Lazi his main occupation in 1906 and founded his own studio in Munich for technical photographs and portraits. He preferred rubber prints for his photographic work . In order to deepen his technical knowledge in photography, he completed evening courses at what was then the Bavarian teaching and research institute.

In 1908 Adolf Lazi left the Bavarian capital and moved to Paris. There he got a job in the photo studio Nadar Fils, with the son (Paul Nadar) of the photo pioneer Nadar . His own rubber prints prove his enthusiasm for pictorialistic photography. When war broke out in 1914, he had to leave Paris for Germany. It did military service on the Western Front. In 1917 he was dismissed as unfit for duty after a stay in a hospital.

In 1918 he founded a photo studio in Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, which he operated under difficult conditions. Successful participation in German and international exhibitions followed.

In 1922 his son Franz Lazi was born.

When he moved to Stuttgart in 1928, the focus of his activities shifted from portrait photography to industrial contracts with material and architectural photography. The modern studio house he designed was built from 1932 to 1933. In 1933, five years after his appointment, Adolf Lazi resigned from the GDL when Franz Grainer signed the Association of the National Socialist Idea at a conference in Erfurt and accepted Heinrich Hoffmann (photographer) .

From 1933 to 1945 Adolf Lazi was, according to his own statements, "eliminated as subversive" from the professional group because he was active as a pacifist. During this time he was forbidden to carry out state and municipal orders. Industrial contracts, including advertising for private clients, were his mainstay during the Nazi era . During this time numerous travel recordings were made.

Adolf Lazi took photos before, during and after the war on behalf of large companies. For many years he did industrial photography on a large scale for Daimler-Benz, Bosch and Kreidler in Stuttgart as well as for Kugelfischer in Schweinfurt and numerous other companies. Architects won him over for documentation work. Floor manufacturers and fabric manufacturers used his photos in product catalogs and for advertising purposes.

The watch factories of Kienzle, Rodenstock and Junghans hired him, as did jewelry companies like Erna Zarges in Murnau. Among the everyday objects that Adolf Lazi photographed in the post-war period were often Werkbund-related, functionalist design, especially porcelain from Arzberg and Fürstenberg, cutlery from WMF in Geislingen and from Pott in Solingen, and glass from the Gral company in Göppingen.

In 1948 he created a portrait photo of Ottomar Domnick in front of the picture T 1947-33 by Hans Hartung . Lazi often created his portraits with exposure times of 20 seconds. In order to ensure a calm demeanor for the person portrayed during this time, he made use of ancient measures that were described in an article in the Spiegel in 1949: “Lazi makes his customers comfortable in such an authoritative way that they cannot move. You are sitting in a comfortable club chair. From armrest to armrest there is a board on which the hands are supported. The head leans against a sheet of plywood with a hole in the middle. The back of the head finds support in the hole. When positioned in this way, even a child can sit still for half a minute. "

After the war, Lazi received further industrial contracts. A picture of grail glass bowls from this period bears a studio stamp with the text "Photographische Bildkunst, Adolf Lazi, Stuttgart, Diemershalde 48".

From 1947 he tried harder to achieve exemplary stylistic and technical quality standards in photography. In 1948 Lazi conducted a public debate with Arthur Ohler , head master of the Stuttgart Photographic Guild, about the role of the guild and the general demands on photographers. He also felt called to start a national and international renewal movement in photography in his city. These included the failed attempt to organize an international photo exhibition, the founding of photography associations, including the Photographische Gesellschaft Stuttgart 1947, the organization of exhibitions and the "International School for Higher Photography - Lazi", or "Lazi School" for short, founded in 1950 , which survived his death in 1955 and continues today as the “Photo Design” department of the Lazi Academy - The European School of Film and Design under the direction of his son A. Ingo Lazi. Adolf Lazi had pulled up the extension to his house at Pischekstrasse 16 in Stuttgart, which was supposed to house this school.

The artistic estate, the Adolf Lazi Archive, is now in Esslingen in the rooms of the Lazi Academy - The European School of Film and Design and is looked after by A. Ingo Lazi. A conservation concept was drawn up by Karen Lämmle at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart.

literature

  • Franz Xaver Schlegel: Adolf Lazi and the situation of photography in Stuttgart around 1948 to 1955. In: Gerda Breuer (ed.): The good life, Der Deutsche Werkbund after 1945. 2007.
  • Karl Ritter von Klimesch: heads of politics, business, art and science. Volume 2, JW Neumann 1953, p. 654.
  • Wilhelm Schöppe: Master of the Camera tell. How they became and how they work. Hall 1935.

Publications

  • IRA. International exhibition in Cologne / Zeppelin House. Sales catalog, October 20 - December 20, 1931 , exhibition organizers: Gebrüder Schürmann, Cologne / Zeppelinhaus. With 8 full-page illustrations based on photographs by Adolf Lazi, Stuttgart
  • The pictorial close-up. Ed .: Eta Lazi. Lazi, Stuttgart 1955
  • Rottenburger picture sheet. Poems by Josef Eberle; Recordings by Adolf Lazi. Unteregger, Rottenburg am Neckar 1981

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinrich Seboldt, who described himself as a sculptor and ivory carver, advertised in the Regensburger Tagblatt in 1859: Regensburger Tagblatt 22, p. 332 . Evidence that a Karl Heinrich Seboldt worked as an architect and sculptor, which can be found online, seems to come exclusively from Lazi circles.
  2. ^ Claudia Gabriele Philipp and Horst W. Scholz: Photographic Perspectives from the Twenties , Museum for Art and Industry, Hamburg 1994, p. 208.
  3. ↑ Martin Schieder: In the view of the other: The Franco-German art relations 1945-1959 . Walter de Gruyter, 2005, ISBN 978-3-05-008475-6 , p. 114 ( preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ a b c Hair should remain hair. Do not breathe for 20 seconds. in: Der Spiegel 40, 1949
  5. ^ Database archive from van-ham.com
  6. ^ Judith Breuer: The photographer Arthur Ohler as chronicler of the pre-war Stuttgart. In: Schwäbische Heimat 71st vol. 2020, p. 148
  7. ^ J. Adolf Schmoll called Eisenwerth, Subjective Photography. The German contribution 1948–1963 , Institute for Foreign Relations 1984
  8. ↑ Conservation concept (PDF; 1.2 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Lazi, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1955
Place of death Stuttgart