Alfred Kohler (painter)

Alfred Kohler (born November 6, 1916 in Schwabach ; † December 28, 1984 there ) was a German painter . He is one of the last representatives of " Classical Modernism " in Germany.

Life

His father was the owner of a gold beating shop , his mother worked as a circumciser in the family business. From 1927 to 1933 Kohler attended the Schwabacher Progymnasium , from 1933 to 1935 the Nuremberg State School for Applied Arts . In 1935 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , where he was the youngest art student at the age of 18. After one semester he became a master class student and left the academy in 1937.

From 1938 he exhibited at the Franke Gallery in Munich. The National Socialists soon assigned his pictures to “ degenerate art ”, so that he had difficulties getting painting materials. In 1938 he returned to Schwabach. From 1938 to 1945 it was subject to an absolute sales ban. In 1941 his studio was destroyed in an air raid on Schwabach.

After the end of the war in 1945, Kohler participated in the founding of Nuremberg art associations such as the " Kreis " and the Association of Visual Artists . He soon left the circle, however, because he did not want to support “the evolving evenness of the young artists, who were often similar in their works to guessing”.

In 1947 his works were shown at the exhibition " Art with New Eyes " in the Franconian gallery at Marientor in Nuremberg , alongside works by Barlach , Beckmann , Heckel , Hofer , Marcks and Nolde . In the same year Kohler received funding as an artist persecuted in Nazi Germany by the art protection department of the US occupation army. In 1949, Kohler founded the Künstlerhilfe together with the former director of the Germanic National Museum Ernst Günter Troche and A. Kormendy . In 1959 Kohler worked for a year as an art teacher at the Nuremberg business school .

In the 1960s and 1970s, Kohler moved around under difficult economic conditions. He spent most of 1975 in Paris, where he was able to sell landscape paintings well. From 1979 he was supported by a patron whom he had known since the 1960s until shortly before his death. This made it possible for Kohler to move back to Schwabach with his family in 1980. Kohler died on December 28, 1984 and was buried in the Unterreichenbach cemetery in Schwabach.

Kohler was married twice. The second marriage resulted in two daughters, the first of which died in childhood.

plant

Kohler mainly created watercolors . In the 1950s he also painted abstract works, including designs for stained glass windows and mosaics. In the 1960s, he experimented with monochrome depictions inspired by Japanese painting. Until his death, however, his focus was on landscapes , flowers, still lifes and portraits .

In the 1950s he made glass pictures for windows in the Meistersinger Conservatory and in the new wing of the Nuremberg City Hall , as well as a large-format oil painting with a view of the city for the Nuremberg Planetarium .

His works were acquired by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung and the Städtische Galerie in Munich , among others . The fact that, according to his own statements, he sold works to the Louvre in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York has proven to be a legend. “Kohler produced a lot, of very different quality. The big breakthrough was not supposed to happen. "

literature

• DM Klinger: Alfred Kohler 1916–1984, masterful watercolors. Nuremberg 1990

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Kohler in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kollwitz and Klinger: Alfred Kohler and the art after 1945  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
2. ↑ Michael Heberling: Master of the watercolors. Almost forgotten: the Schwabach painter Alfred Kohler / 100th birthday. In: Church newspaper for the diocese of Eichstätt from November 6, 2016, p. 16