Adolf Niesmann

Adolf Georg Niesmann (born February 14, 1899 in Nordenham ; † October 17, 1990 in Bad Zwischenahn ) was a painter and art teacher in Oldenburg .

Vita

Adolf Niesmann was the son of the customs district secretary August Georg Niesmann and his wife Elise Ottilie born. Hartmann. He spent his first childhood years in Brake (Unterweser) , attended elementary school in Oldenburg and from 1913 to 1916 the teachers' college there . From 1917 to 1918 he did military service as a submarine driver in the Adriatic , where he came into contact with the people and the culture of Mediterranean countries. These encounters were a lasting inspiration for his later artistic work. From 1918 to 1922 Adolf Niesmann studied at the Staatliche Kunsthochschule in Berlin , where he came into contact with the " Arbeitsrat für Kunst " and the revolutionary " Novembergruppe " through his teacher Bernhard Hasler .

After he had passed the state examination for the higher artistic teaching post, he got a job at the old grammar school in Oldenburg and joined the regional artist group "Barke" founded in 1921. In 1922 he also joined the " Association for Young Art ", in whose club life he played a formative part. Both groups were focal points of progressive artistic endeavors in Oldenburg, and it was here that Adolf Niesmann met influential personalities of the then Oldenburg art and cultural life, such as the museum director Dr. Walter Müller-Wulckow (1886–1964), the lawyer and art patron Dr. Ernst Beyersdorff (1885–1952) and the theater manager Renato Mordo (1894–1955). Adolf Niesmann's great technical talent and his pronounced decorative interest led him to design stage sets for the State Theater in Oldenburg and the decorations for the annual festivals of the "Association for Young Art". Until 1925, Niesmann's work was largely determined by the expressionism of the " Brücke " artists.

Since the mid-1920s he traveled regularly to Italy , where he was again artistically inspired by the Mediterranean culture and the pittura metafisica Giorgio de Chiricos . In Oldenburg, during this time, Niesmann created wall fountains and a terracotta statue for the old grammar school, which led his work over to the emerging neoclassicism . In 1933/34 he built his studio house, built according to his own ideas, in which the demand for functional, Bauhaus- oriented building was met for the first time in the region . The house became a meeting place for the Oldenburg art and culture scene. In 1937/38 Niesmann created two frescos ("Rise and Fall of Icarus" and "The Conquest of Heaven through Technology") for the Schütte - Lanz Hall of Honor of the Oldenburg State Museum for Art and Cultural History , which gave him an examination of ancient mythology and modernity Belief in technology made possible.

In 1939 Adolf Niesmann was drafted into the Navy and returned to Oldenburg in August 1945 from captivity. In 1947 he joined the newly founded Association of Visual Artists , Landesgruppe Oldenburg, of which he was first chairman from 1960 to 1963. Niesmann's work from those years is characterized by a variety of styles. He further developed his personal style, which was based on Pablo Picasso , and tried out new possibilities of painterly design, which led him to Tachism in 1951 . In the mid-1950s, Niesmann returned to representationalism, whereby the subject matter, mostly Mediterranean landscapes, is always implemented in a summary and abstract way. During this time he turned back to building plastic design. In 1961 Adolf Niesmann retired from professional life. Until his death he dealt with current art events.

meaning

Adolf Niesmann is one of the most important painters of Classical Modernism in the Oldenburger Land. He took up suggestions from contemporary national and international art development and implemented them independently in his artistic work. As an art teacher, he passed his artistic standards on to several generations of students. His artistic legacy is fruitful in the Oldenburger Land to this day and has been honored with several museum exhibitions.

literature

• Wilhelm Gilly: Adolf Niesmann. (Catalog for the exhibition in the Oldenburg City Museum) Oldenburg 1976.
• Karl Veit Riedel: The design of the stage sets in Oldenburg and their significance for the visual arts in the Oldenburger Land. In: Heinrich Schmidt (Hrsg.): Court theater - Landestheater - State theater. Oldenburg 1983, pp. 279-315.
• Ewald Gäßler (editing): Gerhard Georg Krueger - Adolf Niesmann - Reinhard Pfennig - Werner Tegethoff. Four Oldenburg artists. (Exhibition catalog) Stadtmuseum Oldenburg, Oldenburg 1987.
• Ewald Gäßler (Ed.): Adolf Georg Niesmann. Paintings, watercolors, drawings 1920–1970. Oldenburg 1992. (with catalog raisonné)
• Jörg Michael Henneberg: The studio house of the painter Adolf Niesmann and the exhibition “The cheap apartment” from 1931. In: Mitteilungsblatt der Oldenburgische Landschaft , No. 72 (1991), pp. 1-4.
• Jörg Michael Henneberg: Niesmann, Adolf. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 519-520 ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Adolf Niesmann in the catalog of the German National Library