Alf Depser

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Alf Depser (born March 23, 1899 in Nuremberg ; † March 2, 1990 in Juist , born as Alfred Depser ) was a German graphic artist, painter , draftsman and wood cutter . Its main places of activity were East Frisia , Westphalia and Franconia .

family

Alfred Depser, eldest son of the post office clerk Hans Depser and his wife Babette, née Reichel, grew up mostly in Ansbach . He had two younger sisters and a brother. Depser married Magdalena Schütte from Varel in 1937 , with whom he had 3 children, Hans-Hellmut in 1937, Bärbel in 1939 and Hilta in 1943.

School and education

Already at the age of fourteen Alfred Depser kept sketchbooks in which he recorded impressions by drawing. He attended the Ansbacher Realgymnasium , which he graduated in 1916. After military service in 1917/1918 in the First World War and involvement in the uprisings around the Soviet republic from April – May 1919, he trained as a chemist at the Nuremberg Technical Center from 1920 and practiced this profession for a short time in Wittenberg. At the end of 1924 he came north to East Frisia for the first time to attend the annual general meeting of the Braunsfelder Vaganten Kreis, BVK, to which he was a member at the time. He stayed in the north for a few months and recorded the landscape and coast in his sketchbooks. The Nord friends advised him to take an artistic education. In 1926 he began studying graphics at the State University for Applied Arts in Nuremberg. With Rudolf Schiestl (1878–1931) he received extensive technical training, which mainly focused on drawing in nature, etchings and wood engravings.

Professional development

From 1934 he belonged to the Bund Deutscher Maler und Graphiker eV of the Reich Chamber of Culture of the Fine Arts and worked as a freelance painter and graphic artist. Each summer he stayed in East Friesland, where he met Otto Leege's family in the north and subsequently visited them repeatedly on the bird protection island of Memmert . This is how his Polychromos picture cycle Memmert was created . In 1936 he acquired the oldest island house in the Loog on the North Sea island of Juist , in which he set up his studio with one of the oldest etching presses in Germany, on which he printed his etchings himself. From Juist he explored the coastal region and sketched both the landscape and the architecture, always working directly in front of the respective motif. His technical precision and a very lifelike representation are to be emphasized.

Since the 1950s he made drawings of Romanesque and Gothic brick churches in East Frisia and neighboring regions, on the basis of which he made wood engravings on pear end grain, the prints of which were used by the parishes for official purposes. The wooden sticks remained in his possession, as he personally accompanied the printing when reorders were made in the print shop. In addition to this commissioned work, many small wood engravings were made, such as animals, birth announcements, alphabets, bookplates , initials , coats of arms (e.g. the coat of arms of the Ostfriesische Landschaft municipal association or that of the island community of Juist).

Depser was with the artist A. Paul Weber friends and corresponded with Peter Härtling , the brothers Ernst Jünger and Friedrich Georg Jünger , of him Wood engraving works on Metamorphoses of Ovid encouraged.

At the beginning of the annual summer season, Depser often traveled to his Franconian homeland, to friends in Tecklenburg in Westphalia or visited his children in Berlin, Wuppertal and Canada. Many sketches and watercolors were also created. A total of 174 Depser sketchbooks from the period between 1913 and 1985 have been preserved.

Oeuvre

After Depser's death, around 1500 individual pieces of artistic life's work were stored in the East Frisian landscape and offered to her by the heirs for purchase. These were watercolors, wood engravings, etchings and drawings, plus 144 of the wooden sticks he made and 61 of his etching plates. A catalog of works by Depser inventory is kept in the landscape library in Aurich . Since 2002 the East Frisian State Museum has had a new offer to preserve this historical treasure for East Frisia.

Publications (excerpt)

  • Paul Maede: Heinrich Erdmann, the settler from Ulrichshof. A story from our days. With 26 drawings by Alf Depser. Julius Beltz Publishing House, Langensalza, Berlin / Leipzig 1934. OCLC 890384143
  • Friedrich Doedens, Harm Wiemann: The Golden Ring. Pictures by Alf Depser and Kurt Windt. Zopfs, Leer 1952. OCLC 73571503
  • Ernst August Becker, Alf Depser, Siegfried Kunstreich, Gebhard Löning, Ernst Moll, Franz Johann Mueller: Reading book for Lower Germany. Local history appendix for East Frisia . Vol. 4 = 7th / 8th School year. Schroedel, Berlin 1956. OCLC 837235497
  • Margarete Windthorst : The crow bush. Inge Meidinger-Geise (Ed.). Four stories with original woodcut initials by Alf Depser. Lechte Verlag, Emsdetten 1970. OCLC 722926285
  • Alf Depser, Ludwig Kittel , Ernst Petrich : Ostfriesland - picture book of a landscape. Franz Johann Mueller (Ed.). Schuster-Verlag, Leer 1976. ISBN 3-7963-0087-1 . OCLC 907579548
  • Arend Dreesen, Alf Depser: Insects from the island - An East Frisian novel. H. Soltau, Norden (East Frisia) 1978. OCLC 256054073
  • Alf Depser: Drawings from East Frisia. H. Soltau, Norden (Ostfriesland) 1981. ISBN 3-922365-11-6 . OCLC 476707720
  • ders .: Franconian sketches - 7 short stories. Hercynia-Verlag, Kipfenberg / Ansbach 1984. OCLC 165461570
  • ders .: A homecoming. Franconia with pen and brush. Hercynia-Verlag, Kipfenberg / Ansbach 1986. OCLC 165640437
  • ders .: On the bird island of Memmert. Hercynia-Verlag, Kipfenberg / Ansbach 1986. OCLC 830721182
  • Heiko Jörn: Alf Depser - painting and graphics. Exhibition catalog. Kulturring Moormerland (Ed.), Leer 1989. OCLC 831360148
  • Alf Depser - Between Juist and Tecklenburg. History and homeland association Tecklenburg from 1922 e. V. (Ed.), Tecklenburg 2016. ISBN 978-3-925147-32-6 . OCLC 1002416720

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1976: East Frisia in graphics from 1900 to today. Aurich .
  • April 23 to May 7, 1989: Alf Depser - painting and graphics. Exhibition in the town hall of the municipality of Moormerland , Warsingsfehn .
  • January 30 to May 8, 2011: Modernism and tradition - art in East Frisia from the Baumfalk Collection . East Frisian State Museum Emden .
  • December 14, 2016 to March 19, 2017: Walk to the end of the world. East Frisian Tea Museum , North (East Frisia) .
  • March 16, 2018 to January 24, 2019: The Memmert picture cycle: Exhibition in the coastal museum in Juist. Wood engravings: in the old Warmbad Juist.
  • March 3 to June 27, 2019: Foray through East Friesland with Alf Depser. Carolinensiel (East Frisia)

Memberships

Honors

  • 1978: Indigenous community of the East Frisian Landscape Association - with this award, people not born in East Frisia are made honorary citizens of the region.

Alf Depser House

In Loogster Pad on the North Sea island of Juist there is the island house , which the artist's family lived in at the time and which he used as a studio, next to which his daughter Bärbel's pottery is now located.

Trivia

A poem on Alf Depser by the writer Peter Härtling (1933–2017) has come down to us.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Depser, Alfred (called: Alf) . On: ostfriesenelandschaft.de
  2. ↑ a b c d e Heiko Jörn: Alfred (called: Alf) DEPSER . (PDF file; 60 KB). On: ostfriesenelandschaft.de
  3. ↑ a b Hans Kolde: Alf Depser 1899–1990. In: Strandlooper, Periodikum des Nordseeheilbades Juist, 1999. On: strandlooper.com
  4. ^ Hans Kolde : The pottery at the Depser house. In: Strandlooper, Periodikum des Nordseeheilbades Juist, Summer 2011 edition, pp. 29–30. On: strandlooper.com
  5. ↑ Fascinated by the idyll of the town. In: Westfälische Nachrichten, October 19, 2016. On: wn.de
  6. ↑ Modernism and Tradition, Art in East Friesland from the Baumfalk Collection. On: landesmuseum-emden.de
  7. ↑ Awards and honors of the East Frisian landscape (PDF file; 76 KB). On: ostfriesenelandschaft.de
  8. ↑ Peter Härtling: The painter Alf Depser . In: Strandlooper, Periodikum des Nordseeheilbades Juist, Summer 2011 edition, p. 31. On: strandlooper.com
personal data
SURNAME Depser, Alf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Depser, Alfred (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist, wood cutter, painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1990
Place of death Juist