Albert Flocon

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Albert Flocon (born Albert Mentzel May 24, 1909 in Köpenick ; died October 12, 1994 in Paris ) was a German-French graphic artist. He is considered to be one of the most versatile and innovative engravers of the second half of the twentieth century. He made various practical and theoretical experiments with perspective .

Life

Albert Mentzel's father was an engineer. He attended the Realgymnasium in Döbeln , the Hermann Lietz School in Haubinda and the Hermann Lietz School in Bieberstein Castle . From 1928 to 1931 he studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau . He began studying architecture with the preliminary course with Josef Albers , then he studied with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky and changed subjects to take part in Oskar Schlemmer 's theater work . In 1929 he and the Bauhaus student Charlotte Rothschild (1909–1944) married; they had three children born in 1932, 1937 and 1939. From 1931 to 1933 he worked as a graphic artist in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main. After the handover of power to the National Socialists , they emigrated to France.

Commemorative plaque Charlotte Mentzel (fcm) .jpg
Commemorative plaque Ruth Mentzel (fcm) .jpg


Memory of Charlotte and Ruth Mentzel in Frankfurt

In Paris he tried to run an advertising studio with Walter Heinz Allner , then he edited a volume of nudes and a couple of children's books by Paul Faucher . Between 1937 and 1939 he worked for Victor Vasarely in an advertising agency for medical advertising. At the beginning of the war in 1939 he was interned by the French in Chambaran . To avoid deportation, he reported to the Foreign Legion and was deployed in North Africa . In 1941 he was demobilized in Pibrac and met his wife in Toulouse , where she worked as a technical translator for Sud-Aviation . Mentzel joined the Resistance . In 1944 the family was arrested in Toulouse, the two younger children could be hidden with acquaintances in the country, Mentzel's wife and the eldest daughter Ruth were deported by the Germans from the Drancy assembly camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp and gassed there. Their names are affixed to the Neuer Börneplatz memorial in Frankfurt am Main. Mentzel himself was imprisoned in the Prison Saint-Michel in Toulouse and was liberated by the Resistance in August 1944.

After the war he moved to Paris and changed his name to the family name of his ancestor Ferdinand Flocon . In 1946 he married Alice Casson, with her he had two more children. He tried to treat his depression with psychoanalysis .

His actual artistic career began after the end of the war. He had started drawing perspectives in prison in Toulouse, and in Paris, Georges Visat introduced him to engraving. In 1948 he had his first exhibition participations with Albert-Edgar Yersin and in 1949 with Paul Éluard . Together with Johnny Friedlaender , also a German refugee, and Georges Leblanc he founded a graphics workshop and graphics school in 1949. From then on he specialized in engraving with the burin .

In 1954 Flocon became a drawing teacher at the École Estienne Print School . In 1964 he received a position at the Beaux-arts de Paris , where he worked as a professor of perspective until 1973.

Flocon was friends with the philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). In 1952 he published his first work on piercing, Traité du burin . He researched the curvilinear perspective (Perspective curviligne). With René Taton he wrote the popular science volume La Perspective , which was published in 1963 as part of the Que sais-je? has been published.

Flocon's work influenced the work of MC Escher and Dick Termes . The engraver Patrice Jeener was his pupil.

Works (selection)

Albert Flocon The Books 1991 Titel.jpg
  • Perspectives , poèmes de Paul Éluard sur des gravures d'Albert Flocon, 1948.
  • Éloge de la main . 1949.
  • Traité du burin . Preface by Gaston Bachelard . Paris: Blaizot, 1952
  • Châteaux en Espagne . 1957
  • L'Univers des livres . Paris: Hermann, 1961
  • Essai Sur L'Espace De Graveur Topographies Suite Burins . Paris: Lucien Scheler, 1961
  • with René Taton : La Perspective . Paris, PUF, "Que-Sais-je?" Series, 1963. ISBN 2-13-054852-0
  • L'Image en question . Paris, Estienne, 1968
  • with André Barre : La Perspective curviligne . 1968
    • The curve-linear perspective: from the space seen to the constructed image . With a foreword for the German edition by Albert Flocon. Albert Flocon in Romanian. Berlin: Medusa, 1983 ISBN 978-3-88602-074-4
  • Entrelacs: Ou Les Divagations d'un Buriniste . Paris: Lucien Scheler, 1975
  • En corps, XII Divertissements aux 2 crayons . St Prex: À l'Atelier de St-Prex, 1980
  • Suites expérimentales . Bilingual. Vienna: Medusa, 1983
  • 12 caprices . Paris: Lucien Scheler and Bernard Claveuil, 1984
  • Scénographies au Bauhaus. Dessau 1927–1930. Homage to Oskar Schlemmer . Paris: Séguier, 1987
  • Gaston Bachelard, Paul Eluard: The books of Albert Flocon .. Translation Nicolaus Bornhorn. Düsseldorf: Bollmann, 1991 ISBN 978-3-927901-08-7
  • Points de fuite, 1929-1933 . Autobiography. Volume I. Neuchâtel: Ides et Calendes, 1994
bibliography
  • Catherine Ballestero: Albert Flocon dans ses livres: bibliographie des ouvrages d'Albert Flocon . Neuchâtel: Ides et Calendes, 1997 ISBN 2-8258-0131-3

literature

  • Helmut Kronthaler: Flocon, Albert . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 41, Saur, Munich a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-598-22781-7 , p. 268 f.
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 306f.
  • Volkhard Knigge , Harry Stein (ed.): Franz Ehrlich . A Bauhaus member in the resistance and concentration camp. (Catalog for the exhibition of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation in cooperation with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in the Neues Museum Weimar from August 2, 2009 to October 11, 2009.) Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-935598- 15-6 , p. 147; Biographical note on Lotte Mentzel on page 154
  • Hans-Jörg Rheinberger : The engraver and the philosopher: Albert Flocon meets Gaston Bachelard . Zurich: Diaphanes, 2016 ISBN 978-3-03734-621-1
  • Henry Ettinghausen: Obituary: Albert Flocon , obituary, in: The Independent, undated
  • Anne Clancier : Albert Mentzel-Flocon, un artiste allemand exilé en France , in: Jean-Pierre Morel , Wolfgang Asholt , Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt (eds.): Dans le dehors du monde: exils d'écrivains et d'artistes au XXe siècle; actes du colloque de Cerisy, 14–21 août 2006 . Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010 ISBN 978-2-87854-478-7 , pp. 151-154
  • Jean-Charles Gateau: Éluard, Picasso et la peinture: (1936–1952) . Geneva: Droz, 1983, pp. 211-217

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charlotte Mentzel, née Rothschild , at Convoi77. According to information provided there, the young couple can be seen in a photo by Etel Fodor-Mittag .
  2. ↑ Hans-Jörg Rheinberger : The engraver and the philosopher: Albert Flocon meets Gaston Bachelard , 2016, p. 117
  3. ↑ Catherine Ballestero is the second daughter of Flocon
  4. ^ Felix Philipp Ingold : Craft and head birth. A chapter in the unconventional history of knowledge: Hans-Jörg Rheinberger on the dialogue between the philosopher Gaston Bachelard and the artist Albert Flocon. , Review, in: NZZ, November 9, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Flocon, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mentzel, Albert (maiden name); Mentzel-Flocon, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-French graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Koepenick
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1994
Place of death Paris