Alfred Schöpffe

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Alfred Schöpffe (born September 20, 1917 in Kassel , † December 17, 1992 in Grafing near Munich ) was a visual artist and art teacher, and designer of numerous churches and municipal buildings.

Life

Alfred Schöpf grew up in Erkner near Berlin and attended secondary school there. He received training as a commercial artist, trade fair and exhibition designer from the painter Otto Friedrich Pape. During the Second World War he was deployed “on all fronts” as a front-line soldier (including in Russia and Stalingrad). In 1945 and 1946 he was a Russian and American prisoner of war. From 1948 to 1954 he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, among others with Professors Teutsch, Nagel and Geitlinger, where he was also a master class student from 1951. He studied etching with Jonny Friedländer in Salzburg. From 1955 he was a freelance painter and graphic artist in Munich and settled in Grafing in 1968 , where he lived and worked with his wife Elisabeth Schöpf until his death in 1992. Some of his works show subjects from Grafing and can also be seen on Grafing buildings.

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Schöpffe was a visual artist and art teacher (graphics, painting, enamel, glass, mosaic or textile art), decorator of numerous churches (e.g. St. Klara , St. Elisabeth, St. Anton, St. Wolfgang u Albertinum in Munich; St. Elisabeth and St. Michael in Kassel; Cathedral in Freising ; Augustinian Convent in Zwiesel, St. Pankratius in Emmering) and municipal buildings (e.g. town hall and town hall Grafing) on ​​behalf of the public.

Work areas

Oil and watercolor painting, wall painting, graphics and prints (etching, lithography, monotype, woodcut), art glass windows, carpets, natural stone mosaic, enamel and bronze work.

Exhibitions

Numerous exhibitions at home and abroad.

In addition to being privately owned, works are in several large and small churches and public buildings (in the towns of Erkner near Berlin, Ebersberg, Grafing near Munich, Vaterstetten, Rosenheim) and collections (Munich Municipal Collections, Veste Coburg Graphic Collection, Diocesan Museum Freising, Eßlingen Artists' Guild) ).

Large commissioned works

Glass windows, tapestries, mosaics, enamel pictures, tabernacles, wall paintings, ceramic works for the churches of St. Klara, St. Elisabeth, St. Anton, St. Wolfgang, Albertinum in Munich; St. Elisabeth and St. Michael in Kassel; Freising Cathedral; Augustinian Convent Zwiesel; St. Pankratius in Emmering; Glass windows for the town hall and town hall in Grafing.

Prices

Several prizes for stained glass windows and wall paintings, including the competition for the Elisabeth Church in Marburg and the competition "A Christ image for today's liturgy" (Diocesan Museum Freising)

interpretation

In his extensive work, the artist Alfred Schöpffe repeatedly dealt with religious topics. As a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, numerous commissions for the artistic design of churches gave devout Catholics the opportunity to deal intensively with the messages of the Christian faith.

As in the rest of his oeuvre, Schöpffe also used a wide variety of techniques in his religious works, such as graphics, painting, enamel, glass, mosaic or textile art. He developed a certain preference for printmaking early on. In this area, his manual tendency to experiment with the material found the greatest expression.

In terms of his modes of expression, Schöpffe tended to be serious, intimate and expressive due to his nature. Correspondingly, after naturalistic beginnings in his work, there was a very rapid compression of the design, an ever greater reduction to the essentials, an increasing abstraction, entirely in the spirit of late expressionism.

Convinced that images have to speak, Schöpffe demanded that his works should not only be images, but that they should also be structures and shapes. In doing so, they should not only prove the artist's skills, but also convey a message, i.e. be a herald. And so the works of Schöpffes tell of his life experience, of his views, insights and his Christian worldview. Accordingly, God, the divine creation, and here in particular man, is the focus of consideration.

On inspection of the oeuvre that Schöpffe left behind, the works with a directly religious content reveal the birth, death and resurrection of Christ as the main themes. These are the focus of the special exhibition. The artist also dealt intensively with the life and work of St. Francis, to whose Canticle of the Sun he dedicated an entire portfolio. But even in the foremost secular works such as the cycle “Bavaria using the example of the district of Ebersberg” there are repeated religious echoes, for example when the traditional local Leonhardifahrt is taken into account, standing for Grafing.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ after: Monika Kraemer, Christoph Kurzeder: Alfred Schöpffe: 1917 - 1992 . Anderland-Verl.-Ges., Munich 1999, ISBN 3-926220-84-8 .
personal data
SURNAME Schöpffe, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German visual artist and art teacher
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH 17th December 1992
Place of death Grafing near Munich