Caspar Walter Rauh

Caspar Walter Rauh (born October 13, 1912 in Würzburg , † October 7, 1983 in Kulmbach ) was a German draftsman, graphic artist and painter of the post-war period . He is considered a representative of fantastic realism .

Life

Rauh's father was a civil servant, the mother of rural origin. The family moved to Bayreuth , where Rauh attended the humanistic grammar school from 1923 and joined the Wandervogel movement in 1926 . After graduating from high school in 1932, he began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Professors Werner Heuser and Heinrich Nauen . He admired Kubin , Masereel and Cézanne . In 1934/35 he spent a few months in Amsterdam with former Paul Klee and Bauhaus students. From 1936 he continued his art studies at the Leipzig Academy with Walter Tiemann . A year later he moved to Berlin, where he worked as an artist and at the same time worked for an advertising agency. A first exhibition took place in 1939 in the Berlin gallery Zintl. In the same year, immediately after his marriage, he became an infantryman on the front in Poland. The war later brought him to France and Russia, where he was employed as a cartographer. He was taken prisoner towards the end of the war.

From 1945 to 1955 Rauh lived under difficult economic conditions in the Upper Franconian village of Himmelkron , where his family had been evacuated during the war. To secure his livelihood, Rauh drew the houses of the villagers, for which he was often paid in kind. In 1955, the family, which had now had a son and a daughter, moved to Kulmbach, where Rauh lived until his death in 1983. Since 1958 he was a member of the Belgian artist group Fantasmagie , which includes representatives of Fantastic Realism from all over Europe. He regularly participated in the group's exhibitions as well as in other group exhibitions. His work has also been shown repeatedly in solo exhibitions. In 1971 he received the culture award of the Upper Franconian economy . Caspar Walter Rauh died on October 7, 1983 in Kulmbach.

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Pen drawing and etching

Even during the war, small-format pen drawings were created using a “fantastic” and symbolic visual language. The horrors of the war also determined Rauh's artistic production in the post-war period. In 1947 a portfolio with 16 pen drawings was published, then - in an edition of 10,000 copies - the volume Niemandsland , which contains 48 pen drawings, each accompanied by short texts. In it, Rauh developed a visual language committed to surrealism and fantastic painting , which allows war to appear as an apocalypse, the result of which is a no man's land in which Western values ​​have lost their validity. At almost the same time, Rauh conceived another project entitled Traumland . However, this volume was only released from the estate in 1993. In contrast to No Man's Land , the pen drawings in Traumland are all colored. The volume, described by Rauh himself as an attempt “to dream of rising above the misery, to build your own world - a magic garden”, is all about humor, the bizarre, the idyll. Already in this creative phase there was a tension that was decisive for the further development of Rauh's work: the tension between the relentless portrayal of barbarism and destruction on the one hand and the lust for the miraculous, irony and caricature on the other.

After a short phase at the beginning of the 1950s, in which Rauh created abstract compositions (mostly in mixed media), Rauh concentrated again on a fantastic realism oscillating between horror and humor. Although works in larger formats were increasingly being created, small-format pen drawings and above all etchings continued to form the center of artistic production. From 1958 portfolios with etchings appeared on a regular basis, which Rauh printed himself and marketed himself.

Watercolors

A second focus of his work was watercolors with pen and ink drawings that Rauh had been making since the 1950s, but increasingly after 1970. These are almost exclusively landscapes, with the spectrum ranging from sketches of “real” landscapes to imaginary scenarios in which rampant “surreal” structures dominate.

Illustrations of literary works

Rauh opened up a third field of activity as an illustrator of literary texts. His affinity for the classics of fantastic literature was reflected in illustrations for the works of Edgar Allan Poe , Jean Paul and ETA Hoffmann . In addition, Rauh also worked in the field of children's books and equipped three of the Borgmännchen volumes by Mary Norton with pen drawings; In addition, numerous works were created on Grimmscher motifs and other fairy tales.

Writing: fairy tales

Rauh's fascination with fairy tales is also evidenced by his own literary production. Between 1950 and 1955 he wrote 33 short fairy tale texts that were broadcast by Bayerischer Rundfunk and printed by various daily newspapers.

"Architectural art"

Rauh accepted various orders for the design of large-scale glass mosaics, primarily to secure a livelihood. His “Art in Architecture” can be found primarily in the Kulmbach / Bayreuth area. A well-known example is a transformer house that shows animals from the African savannah (location: Kulmbach, Am Schießgraben). In his autobiographical sketch Curriculum Vitae , Rauh describes this commissioned work as "unsatisfactory".

estate

Rauh's estate, an extensive collection of drawings, prints, paintings and the entire workshop complex are on permanent loan from the Upper Franconian Foundation in the Bayreuth Art Museum .

Publications (selection)

• Caspar Walter Rauh. Portfolio with 16 pen drawings. Munich 1947.
• No mans land. Illustrated book with 48 pen drawings. Munich 1947.
• Curriculum. Portfolio with 16 etchings. Kulmbach 1958 (self-published).
• Fish going over land. Portfolio with 10 etchings. Kulmbach 1970 (self-published).
• Ten chants of the moon. Portfolio with 10 etchings. Kulmbach 1973 (self-published).
• The snail woman remembers. Portfolio with four etchings. Rottendorf 1974.
• Anywhere and nowhere. Portfolio with 10 etchings. Kulmbach 1978 (self-published).
• Lonely days. Portfolio with 5 etchings. Kulmbach 1983 (self-published).
• Difficult enchantment. Fantasy pieces by CW Rauh. Ed. V. Wolfram Benda. Bayreuth 1987.
• Dreamland. No mans land. 2 volumes. Bayreuth 1993.

Illustrations

• Mary Norton: The Borg males. With 34 pen drawings. Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1955.
• Mary Norton: The Borg males in the bush and field. With 30 pen drawings. Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1957.
• Mary Norton: The Borg men on ship. With 34 pen drawings. Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1962.
• EA Poe: The murders on Rue Morgue. With 28 pen drawings. Stuttgart 1976.
• Jean Paul: The Airship Giannozzo Seebuch. With four etchings. Bayreuth 1980.
• ETA Hoffmann: Signor Formica . With three etchings. Bayreuth 1981.

Musical reception

• Horst Lohse : Bird Monument in Dissolution (1993) for flute and piano (in memoriam Caspar Walter Rauh)
• Horst Lohse: AllerleiRauh (2000). 6 fantasy pieces for violin and piano, based on pages from the etching cycle Curriculum (1958) by Caspar Walter Rauh

1.  Arguable birds - 2.  Finding the right note - 3.  In the bushes - 4.  Playing in the clock - 5.  Blown leaf - 6.  Under a hat

• Horst Lohse: Fischgesänge (2012/13) for recitation and guitar. Texts: Ingo Cesaro , based on pictures from the etching cycle Fish over Land (1970) by Caspar Walter Rauh

1.  Night bath - 2.  Help for the weak - 3.  Cocky fish - 4.  Tower of fish - 5.  Quick return - 6.  Sad end - 7.  Carved so deep

• Horst Lohse: Tree Stories (2019) for recitation, guitar and piano. Texts: Ursula Shields-Huemer, after etchings by Caspar Walter Rauh

1.  Dreaming Tree - 2.  Tree Stove - 3.  Drunk

Literature (selection)

• Hans Küfner (ed.): Caspar Walter Rauh. Catalog raisonné of prints 1951–1973. Rottendorf 1973.
• Hans Küfner: Caspar Walter Rauh. A fantastic draftsman in Franconia. Wuerzburg 1977.
• Hans Küfner (ed.): Caspar Walter Rauh. Catalog raisonné of prints 1974–1983. Rottendorf 1987.
• Caspar Walter Rauh - Abstract works. City of Bayreuth / Kulturreferat, 1993 (catalog).
• Caspar Walter Rauh - Fantastic worlds. City of Bayreuth / Kulturreferat, 1996 (catalog).
• Caspar Walter Rauh - Objects in flight. Bayreuth Art Museum, 2000 (series of publications by the Bayreuth Art Museum, vol. 7).
• Martina Ruppert: Caspar Walter Rauh and Surrealism. Bayreuth 2002.
• Marina von Assel (ed.): Through abstraction to the symbolic. Caspar Walter Rauh - Hubert Berke. Bayreuth 2004 (series of publications by the Bayreuth Art Museum, vol. 13).
• Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa (ed.): Caspar Walter Rauh. Difficult enchantment. Catalog for the exhibition in the Petrikirche Kulmbach 2005. Kulmbach 2005.
• Marina von Assel (ed.): Caspar Walter Rauh. Fairytale. Stories and pictures. Bayreuth 2006 (series of publications by the Bayreuth Art Museum, vol. 21).
• Wolfram Benda (ed.): Dream images - Image dreams: Alfred Kubin, Caspar Walter Rauh, Stephan Klenner-Otto. Three generations of fantastic art. Hanover 2009.
• Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa (ed.): Contemporary witness and fantastic. On the work of Caspar Walter Rauh. Hanover 2011.
• Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa: Our face is destroyed . Body representations in Caspar Walter Rauh's no man's land . In: Sarah Mohi-von Känel / Christoph Steier (ed.): Post-war bodies. Precarious corporealities in German-language literature of the 20th century. Wuerzburg 2013
• Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa: Caspar Walter Rauh in Ireland. Invitation to discover a forgotten surrealist. In: Yearbook of the German Studies Association of Ireland, Volume 12 (2017), pp. 249-251.
• Matthew Sweeney : Response. To pictures of Caspar Walter Rauhs : first report - fish update - no man's land . Translated by Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa. In: Yearbook of the German Studies Association of Ireland, Volume 12 (2017), pp. 256–259.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Caspar Walter Rauh: Traumland , p. 67.
2. ^ Caspar Walter Rauh: Curriculum Vitae. Report about a draftsman himself . In: Hans Küfner (ed.): Caspar Walter Rauh. Catalog raisonné of prints 1951-1973. Rottendorf 1973, pp. 9-16, here: p. 14.