Alexander Pfohl

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Alexander Pfohl (* 1894 in Haida (today Nový Bor ), Kingdom of Bohemia , Austria-Hungary , † August 9, 1953 in Hadamar ) was a German glass designer , landscape painter and university teacher .

Life

The Alexander Pfohls family was active in Bohemian glass production on both his father's and mother's side for many generations. From 1908 he attended the glass school in Haida for three years, where he completed an apprenticeship as a glass painter. Pfohl received a scholarship to attend the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna and studied there with Koloman Moser and Michael Powolny . He completed internships in the Carl Goldberg glass refinery and the Reich company , both in Haida; He also supplied designs for the Viennese porcelain manufacturer Joseph Böck and the Wiener Werkstätte .

At the end of his studies, Pfohl was to travel to Rome with another scholarship for a study visit, which he was unable to take up because of the outbreak of the First World War . He did military service and served on the Eastern Front as well as in Italy and Albania . He recorded his impressions of this time in drawings.

From 1919 to 1927 Pfohl headed the design studio of the Graflich Schaffgotschen Josephinenhütte in Schreiberhau in Lower Silesia (today Szklarska Poręba ), where he shaped the artistic appearance of production at that time. Here he dealt with the design of representative individual pieces and of utility glass for series production; He adapted the already existing product range to the zeitgeist. Pfohl designed many pieces in the Art Deco style and used the technique of brilliant enamel glaze.

In his spare time, Pfohl worked as a landscape painter. He showed his works at exhibitions of the Association of Visual Artists St. Lukas in Schreiberhau as well as the Reichenberger Metzner Association and the Association of German Visual Artists in Bohemia . Many of his pictures were taken while hiking in the Giant Mountains . With his hyper-realistic representations, he is considered a representative of the New Objectivity .

From 1929 to 1945 Alexander Pfohl taught as a specialist teacher for design and drawing at the State Glass School in Haida. During these years he created numerous designs for companies in the North Bohemian glass centers. Although his professorship in Czechoslovakia was revoked after the end of World War II , he continued to work as an instructor in his brother Erwin's glass painting workshop. Pfohl had lived in a villa while he was teaching, which has now been confiscated and converted into an apprentice accommodation. From Germany he received offers to manage the Central German glass industry in Ilmenau in Thuringia , a specialist teaching position at the Rheinbach School of Glass near Bonn and the management of the Zwiesel Glass School in Lower Bavaria . Pfohl repeatedly made exit applications, which were finally granted in 1948.

After the war, numerous glass specialists had left the North Bohemian region around Haida and settled in Hadamar in central Hesse . So Pfohl and his family moved here. He initially worked as a designer for the Haida-based glass refinery Meltzer & Tschernich and, from 1949, as the first teacher at the Hadamar School of Glass, which he co-founded . He worked here until his sudden death in 1953. It was in honor of Alexander Pfohl street named in Hadamar.

Brigitte Herrmann-Pfohl, Alexander Pfohl's daughter, gave the Silesian Museum in Görlitz numerous glasses, archival documents and photos as well as works from her father's artistic estate to the Silesian Museum in Görlitz in the mid-2010s. Some of his works can be found in the collections of the Hadamar Glass Museum and the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Erwin Pfohl (1906–1975) took over the workshop in 1938 from his father Alexander Pfohl senior (1866–1943). He remained in Nový Bor until his death. Proof:
    Verena Wasmuth: Czech glass. Artistic design in socialism . Volume 35 of Studies on Art . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-41250-170-9 , p. 80.
    Carolus Hartmann: The glass in the Haida and Steinschönau area. Art Glass Publisher, 2004, ISBN 3-00012-917-0 , p. 172.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Alexander Pfohl . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
  2. ↑ a b c Alexander Pfohl jun. In: emuseum Düsseldorf.
  3. ↑ Alexander Pfohl Jr. (1894-1953) In: clarescoglass.com, Who is who?
  4. ↑ Verena Wasmuth: Czech glass. Artistic design in socialism. Volume 35 of Studies on Art. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-41250-170-9 , p. 80.
  5. ↑ How Bohemian artists shaped the glass side of Hadamar. In: Frankfurter Neue Presse from May 13, 2015.
  6. ↑ Alexander-Pfohl-Straße, Hadamar, Germany. In: Google Maps .
  7. ↑ Glass museum in the princely apartment of the Hadamar Renaissance castle . In: glasmuseum-hadamar.de
personal data
SURNAME Pfohl, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German glass designer, landscape painter and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Haida , Kingdom of Bohemia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1953
Place of death Hadamar