Alexander Wolfgang

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alexander Wolfgang (born March 13, 1894 in Arnstadt , † March 14, 1970 in Gera ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

Alexander Wolfgang lived in Arnstadt until 1908, then in Gera. His father was the businessman Alexander Albert Wolfgang, his mother Adele Luise geb. Thieme. The mother died in childbed. In the same year the father married Marie Haener, about whom he later wrote that she had been "a good mother to him". In 1904 the parents moved to Stützerbach . He stayed with an uncle in Arnstadt so he could attend grammar school there. From 1909 to 1912 he completed a commercial apprenticeship at the Gera carpet factory Joh. Fr. Spaethe. From 1912 to 1913 he worked as an accountant in an iron shop in Gera. Immediately before and during the First World War , he did military service, especially in France, where he often visited museums. In doing so, he came into contact with the Barbizon School and perhaps the Impressionists . Inspired by a small paint box he had received as a Hindenburg donation , he made his first attempts at painting.

In 1919 he returned to his parents' house, resumed the trade and began intensive self-study in painting. In 1920 he became an employee of the Gera tax office. In the same year he took part with Kurt Günther , Erhard Frommhold and others in the Christmas exhibition of the Künstlerbund Ostthüringens and the Art Association Gera.

From 1922 he became close friends with the Weimar painter Alfred Ahner . In 1929 he met his future wife Hedwig Dix, sister of the Gera painter Otto Dix . In 1930 he gave up his commercial activity in order to be able to devote himself entirely to freelance painting. In 1939 he married Hedwig Dix and the following year moved into her parents' house in Gera-Untermhaus. From 1942 to 1945 he did military service as a paymaster. During the Third Reich he was a member of the NSDAP , but was rehabilitated in 1946 by the Gera anti-fascist bloc because he was "not ... actively involved", as it is said in a letter to the Gera Cultural Office.

In the following years his works were shown regularly in important group exhibitions in Thuringia. In 1946 he was co-founder of the "Artists Guild" and the "Small Gallery" Gera. He moved into a studio in the attic of the Gera main post office, which he held until the early 1960s. He dealt intensively with abstract painting , especially with cubist forms of expression. From 1951 he was friends with the Gera painter Herbert Enke , with whom he realized several joint works. During the same period he became friends with Erhard Frommhold, who helped initiate the purchase of three of his paintings for the state government of Thuringia. Important subjects for him were landscapes (especially the lake landscape around Plothen ), the circus and the folk festival.

In 1956 he took part in the long-planned exhibition "Artists of the Gera District" in the Altenburg Lindenau Museum , and in 1958 at the IV German Art Exhibition in Dresden . In 1960 the long-standing friendship with the Gera artists Eberhard Dietzsch and Christian Lüttich began. A planned solo exhibition in the Ulm Artists' Guild did not take place due to a lack of approval from the VBKD . From the mid-1960s onwards, his health deteriorated, so that his productivity, which had been great until then, declined. In 1969, Lothar Lang published a highly acclaimed essay on his work on the Weltbühne . In the same year, the Berlin Museum for German History bought two of his early paintings. In 1970 he died in Gera after a long illness.

In the years after his death, well-known art collections acquired works by him:

  • In 1976 several of his drawings went to the Kupferstichkabinett Dresden
  • In 1976 the Moritzburg Halle gallery bought the drawing "Mother Dix" and a watercolor "Untermhaus"
  • In 1980 the Gera art gallery bought a large part of his estate.

Awards

  • 1961: Art Prize of the City of Gera

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Wolfgang, Alexander in: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. Fifth volume , EA Seemann, Leipzig 1962. (p. 163).
  • Lang, Lothar: Die Weltbühne 24 (1969), No. 15, April 15, pp. 468-470
  • Frommhold, Erhard : Alexander Wolfgang Verlag der Kunst (painter and work), Dresden 1975
  • Lang, Lothar : Encounters in the Atelier , Henschelverlag Berlin, 1975, pp. 181–185
  • Art Collection Gera (Ed.): Alexander Wolfgang: Zum 100th Birthday; Art collection Gera, Orangery, exhibition from April 10 to June 5, 1994 . Art collection Gera, Gera 1994 ISBN 3-910051-16-2

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Art collection Gera (ed.): Alexander Wolfgang: Zum 100th Birthday; Art collection Gera, Orangery, exhibition from April 10 to June 5, 1994 . Art collection Gera, Gera 1994 ISBN 3-910051-16-2 | Page: 85
personal data
SURNAME Wolfgang, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnstadt
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1970
Place of death Gera