Alf Bayrle

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Alf Bayrle (born as Alfons Bayrle, also: Alf Singer-Bayrle; * December 15, 1900 in Biberach an der Riss ; † September 11, 1982 in Rotthalmünster ) was a German modern painter and graphic artist .

Life

After his military service and participation in the First World War , Bayrle studied from 1918 to 1922 at the Stuttgart Academy with Adolf Hölzel , Robert Poetzelberger , Gottfried Graf , Arnold Waldschmidt and at the arts and crafts school with Heinrich Körner and Friedrich Schneidler . His friendship with Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer also began at this time , but he only took part in his Triadic Ballet at the Paris performance in 1932.

In 1922 he moved to Munich and continued his studies until 1925. There he studied with Franz von Stuck at the Academy , Hans Hofmann at the School of Fine Arts and at the University with Karl Christian Kehrer and Heinrich Wölfflin . In 1923 and 1924, as a student in Munich, he wrote about the lack of understanding of modern art.

Paris

In 1926 he moved to Paris and settled there as a painter, at the same time he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (with Othon Friesz and André Lhote ). His friends included Colette , André Derain , Rene Jurdain, Paul Poiret and Maurice Ravel . Bayrle followed Rene Jurdain's suggestion to share studio space, but from 1928 to 1934 he also spent several months in St. Tropez with Madame Aude. In Paris he was in contact with Giorgio de Chirico, Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, Raoul Dufy, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Although he is an active and recognized member of the Parisian art scene, his exhibitions there are insufficiently documented and researched. In 1927 he exhibited together with Arno Breker , who also lived in Paris. In 1934 Fritz Neugass wrote a series on Parisian artists for Weltkunst magazine , one article was dedicated to Bayrle. From Paris he went on painting trips to England.

Africa

Alf Bayrle as an employee of the institute, 1934

In 1934 Leo Frobenius offered him to come back to Germany and accompany him to Africa as a research and artistic assistant at the institute. Two years later, Im Lande des Gada, Wanderings amidst the rubble of South Abessia , was published, and the book was accompanied by 40 plates in gravure by Alf Bayrle. The Geographical Society in Vienna ruled in 1936: "In addition to the beautiful photographs, the painter Alf Bayrle also contributed a large number of drawings which, as far as they illustrate ethnographic and anthropological motifs, are also scientifically valuable."

In Ethiopia, Bayrle acquired an icon with the title Saint George, the dragon slayer, saves the virgin Birutawit , which he later donated to the religious studies collection of the University of Marburg. Further expeditions to southern France, Spain, Libya and Ethiopia followed, at least one of them together with Adolf Ellegard Jensen . When Helmut and Ilse Wohlenberg traveled to Africa in 1988, they were proudly shown a portrait of the son of Bamballe der Konso that Alf Bayrle had drawn of Bamballe's father.

Germany

In 1937 his travels were over and Bayrle moved to Berlin with his wife, Elisabeth Weiss, who had a doctorate in art history, where his son Thomas Bayrle was born on November 7, 1937 . This also became an artist. In 1939 he was called up for military service and was taken prisoner. His wife and three sons were evacuated to Oberndorf near Gelnhausen in 1940 . Much of his previous plant was destroyed in bombing raids in 1943 and 1944. Bayrle lived with his family in Oberndorf until 1953, but had his studio in Frankfurt since 1948 . He became a member of the Professional Association of Visual Artists Frankfurt am Main. In the early post-war period, in addition to his artistic activity, he also took on orders for backdrops and decorations, and taught as a vocational school teacher at the Gutenberg School , one of his pupils there was Gerd Kehrer . Both Alf Bayrle and Thomas Bayrle had their studio in the same house with Adam Silk at Röderbergweg No. 64. In 1966 Alf Bayrle opened a second studio in Bonn and in 1968 was a founding member of the artist group Semikolon and a member of the artist group Bonn . He refused a retrospective of his works all his life, so that the major exhibition in 1980 mainly showed contemporary works.

After his death in 1982, retrospectives were shown in Frankfurt in 1985 and in Bonn in 1989. In 1987 Adam Silk dedicated his novel Rebecca to the memory of the painter Alf Bayrle. In 2012 the Weltkulturenmuseum showed two exhibitions, one with works by Alf Bayrle and one with reference to Alf Bayrle, after which it was decided to show a large part of them in the permanent exhibition.

In 2012, the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt showed for the first time drawings and photographs that Bayrle had made on the 12th German Inner-African Research Expedition (DIAFE) of Leo Frobenius in 1934/35 of the phallic steles in Tutu Fela in Ethiopia .

plant

His time with Hans Hofmann, his artistic work in Paris and his trips to Africa are considered to be influential on Alf Bayrle's work. During his time in Paris he often painted still lifes. Sina Hofmann-Ginsburg and Karla Bilang see in the work of Alf Bayrle "an outspoken Cezannism".

For the Reichskolonialbund he designed posters (e.g. for the first Reichskolonialtagung in Bremen in 1938) and postcards. His poster The Reichskolonialbund calls you too! from 1938 is on permanent display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and in the collection of the University of California, Berkeley .

Much of his early work was destroyed in bombing, fortunate that he had sold a lot in the 1920s and 1930s. As a visitor in 1967 he discovered the work Still Life with Pineapple in the exhibition of the Kasimir Hagen Collection , which he had painted in Paris in 1929. The topic of Africa occupied him even after the expeditions and influenced his later work. He had to sell a collection of African art and antiques that previously lined his studio in the late 1940s. Two drawings by Bayrle were in Richard Hamann-Mac Lean's collection . Comparable to his work in Africa were his drawings on the front, primarily of a documentary nature, for example the watercolor on the construction of the Atlantic Wall from 1940 ( Portland Art Museum collection ) and the drawing of the refugee train in a destroyed town . Most of these drawings are in the German Historical Museum . They show both the civilian population and the soldiers in a gloomy, melancholy mood.

Bayrle's post-war work is characterized by abstract landscapes. His late work focused on heads, which he drew in many ways in ink and represented various feelings and characters, but he turned away from classical portraiture completely. He signed his works with Bay and in rare cases with his full name, he left some sketches and drafts unsigned.

A large part of the estate is in the Rhenish Archive for artists' bequests.

Individual works (selection)

  • Self-portrait , impressionistic representation Oil on canvas
  • Three fruits , oil on steel plate
  • Coal mining area , oil on canvas, 76 cm × 86 cm, ins. "Paris 1930"
  • Provence landscape , watercolor drawing, 1937
  • Maritime landscape with a gorge , oil on panel 67 cm × 56 cm, dated 1946
  • Still life with bottle and fruit , 1964
  • Still life with a bottle and fruits
  • Femme agenouillée se tenant le bas-ventre , printed 200 copies, 1971 (one copy in the Musée des beaux-arts Bordeaux, since 2004)
  • Square landscape , acrylic on cardboard 56 cm × 55 cm, 1973
  • Trees in front of a wall
  • Portrait of an actress
  • Hohenstaufen landscape
  • New moon over a mountain lake , gouache, 58 cm × 47 cm
  • Black head from the series Heads, ink drawing on paper, ins. "New Years Eve 81-82"
  • Girl's head , Bonn Art Museum

After 1945 the allied Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point held an exhibition with Bayrle works, the following works were shown:

  • Sunflowers (watercolor)
  • Young goalkeeper (watercolor)
  • Sheaves (watercolor)
  • Landscape Spanish border (watercolor)
  • Still life (chalk drawing)
  • Head study (chalk drawing)
  • Young man (chalk drawing)
  • Basque (chalk drawing)
  • Tree landscape (pen drawing)
  • Arab (watercolor)
  • Praying farmer (watercolor)
  • Farmer's wife (ink drawing)
  • Field of corn (ink drawing)
  • Market woman (watercolor)
  • Harlequin (watercolor)
  • Flowers (watercolor)

Exhibitions and participation in exhibitions (selection)

Since 1927 u. a. in: Athens, Bonn, Darmstadt, Essen, Frankfurt, Johannesburg (South Africa), Marburg, Mühlhausen, Munich, Paris, Stuttgart, Villemomble / Paris. Works by Alf Bayrle can be found in private and public collections at home and abroad.

  • Alf Bayrle , Kunsthallen Hansa, Essen 1925
  • Alf Bayrle and Arno Breker , Paris 1927
  • Alf Bayrle 80 , Electoral gardener's house in Bonn in 1980
  • Alf Bayrle , EXPO Gallery Frankfurt / Berlin 1985
  • The morbid poetry of parting. Works by three deceased members of the Bonn artist group , 1989
  • Alf Bayrle - Oil paintings and works on paper: Galerie Rosenberg , 1990
  • Africa - Ethnographies, Wiesbaden 1997
  • OBJECT ATLAS - FIELD RESEARCH IN THE MUSEUM , new hanging of the expedition paintings and photographs by Alf Bayrle, World Culture Museum, 2012
  • Portraits of distant worlds: expedition painting between ethnography and art , 2012

literature

  • AE Jensen (Hrsg.): In the land of Gada - walks between the debris of South Abessini . With the collaboration of Hellmut Wohlenberg and Alf Bayrle, with contributions by Leo Frobenius. New edition 1986.
  • Peter Ruthenberg (ed.): Forgotten pictures. Alf Bayrle, Arnold Fiedler, Heinrich Fischer, Elsa-Bertha Fischer-Ginsburg, Carl Heidenreich, Marianne Herberg, Waltraut Niepmann, Ludwig Weninger. Eight students from the "School of Fine Arts, Hans Hofmann" , Munich (1915–1932).
  • Peter Ruthenberg (Ed.): Alf Bayrle: Paintings and Drawings 1919-22 . Berlin / Frankfurt 1985.
  • Peter Ruthenberg (Ed.): Alf Bayrle: Paintings and Drawings 1922-29 . Berlin / Frankfurt 1985.
  • Clémentine Deliss : Fieldwork in the Museum , Bielefeld 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Felix Billeter, Antje Günther, Steffen Krämer: Münchner Moderne: Art and Architecture of the Twenties, p. 176.
  2. ↑ a b Peter Ruthenbert: Alf Beyerle - Life and Work in the Twenties
  3. ↑ Andreas Holleczek, Andrea Meyer: French Art-German Perspectives, 1870-1945: Sources and comments, page 35
  4. ^ Geographical Society in Vienna: Mitteilungen, No. 79–80, p. 101, 1936
  5. ^ Religion on Wednesday. Program 2012/2013 , Religious Studies Collection, Inv. No. B-Dg 001
  6. ↑ Thomas Bayrle , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 25/2009 from June 16, 2009, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  7. ↑ Adam Silk: Rebecca., 1987, p. 6
  8. ↑ Weltkulturen Museum, opening of the exhibition Object Atlas - Field Research in the Museum (accessed on July 19, 2018)
  9. ↑ Sina Hofmann-Ginsburg, Karla Bilang: A German-Jewish family of artists, Hentrich & Hentrich, 2005, p. 188
  10. ↑ Bayrle, Alf, The Reichskolonialbund calls you too! [The Imperial Colonial Federation Summons You Too! - IWMPC - VADS: the online resource for visual arts] .
  11. ↑ The Reichskolonialbund is calling you too! .
  12. ↑ On the construction of the Atlantic Wall (Building a Bunker, Atlantic Wall) .
  13. ↑ a b http://www.dhm.de/datenbank/img.php?img=gwac5489&format=1
  14. ↑ DHM object database .
  15. ^ Artists of the Rheinisches Archiv for artists' bequests .
  16. ^ German Documentation Center for Art History - Photo Archive Photo Marburg, Object 20740648
  17. ↑ Joconde - catalog - dictionnaires .
  18. ^ Art Sandra .
  19. ↑ Page 4 Ardelia Hall Collection: Wiesbaden Administrative Records - Fold3 .
personal data
SURNAME Bayrle, Alf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Singer-Bayrle, Alf; Bayrle, Alfons (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist, sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Biberach an der Riss
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1982
Place of death Rotthalmünster