Carola Giedion-Welcker

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Carola Giedion-Welcker (born April 25, 1893 in Cologne , † February 21, 1979 in Zurich ) was a German-Swiss art historian .

life and work

Carola Welcker was born in Cologne in 1893 as the daughter of the banker Carl Welcker (1848–1928) and his American wife Mary Legien (1865–1919). She studied art history in Munich with Heinrich Wölfflin and with Paul Clemen in Bonn, where she received her doctorate in 1922 . During her studies, she met her Swiss colleague Sigfried Giedion , whom she married in 1919. In 1923 the couple met László Moholy-Nagy , who introduced them to Hans Arp a year later . Arp imparted her knowledge of the literature of Lautréamont , Rimbaud and Jarry and introduced it to the Surrealist exhibition in Paris in 1925 . Through Arp she met Piet Mondrian and Constantin Brâncuși , whom she visited in his studio in 1928 and later wrote a monograph about him.

In 1925 the Giedions moved to Zurich . Their home became a meeting place for modern artists such as Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp , Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst . Irish writer James Joyce was also one of her guests. Giedion-Welcker met Paul Klee personally in Bern and wrote a biography about him. One year before her death (1946), Paul Klee's widow Lily Klee- Stumpf ordered in her will that her husband's artistic estate should be looked after by a commission which, in addition to her son Felix, also included Carola Giedion-Welcker and Bernese collectors Werner Allenbach, Rolf Bürgi, Hans Meyer-Benteli and Hermann Rupf should belong.

Giedion-Welcker published about 280 articles in magazines on modern painting, sculpture and poetry and wrote 17 books, including Modern Plastic , Poètes à l'Écart and the anthology Schriften 1926–1971 , edited in 1973 by Reinhold Hohl .

In 2007 the Kunsthaus Zürich dedicated an exhibition curated by Cathérine Hug to Carola Giedion-Welcker . It showed how the Zurich-born art historian, author and curator shaped the city's cultural life and influenced the Kunsthaus's purchasing policy. Around 40 works from painting, sculpture and graphics, photos and letters made up the exhibits at the exhibition.

Fonts (selection)

  • Bavarian Rococo sculpture. JB Straub and his position in landscape and time . Law, Munich 1922 (= dissertation).
  • Modern plastic. Elements of reality; Mass and loosening up . Girsberger, Zurich 1937.
  • Sublimation and spiritualization of the plastic form in Medardo Rosso . In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 41, 1954, pp. 329–334.
  • Sculpture of the XX. Century . Hatje, Stuttgart 1955.
  • Hans Arp . Hatje, Stuttgart 1957.
  • Constantin Brancusi . Benno Schwabe & Co, Basel 1958.
  • Alfred Jarry. A monograph . Arche, Zurich 1960 & 1988, ISBN 3-7160-3512-2 .
  • Paul Klee , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1961, 17th edition 1995, ISBN 3-499-50052-3 .
  • Writings 1926–1971. Stations on a time image . DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 1973, ISBN 3-7701-0630-X .

literature

  • Iris Bruderer-Oswald: The New Seeing. Carola Giedion-Welcker and the language of modernity . Benteli Verlag, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7165-1450-4 .
  • Regula Krähenbühl (Ed.): Avant-gardes in the focus of art criticism. A tribute to Carola Giedion-Welcker (1893–1979) . Files from the interdisciplinary symposium in Zurich, 22./23. October 2009 (= outlines volume 6). Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-908196-78-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. James Joyce Center .
  2. The founding history of the Paul Klee Foundation ( Memento from October 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. Carola Giedion-Welcker: Paul Klee , p. 171.
  4. Quoted from kunsthaus.ch, accessed on January 6, 2011.