Christian Gottlieb Kühn
Christian Gottlieb Kühn (born June 16, 1780 in Dresden ; † December 20, 1828 there ) was a German sculptor .
Life
Kühn received his training from Franz Pettrich . After traveling through Italy, Kühn worked in Dresden from 1803. He lived at the Gondelhafen until 1824 and then moved into his father's house on Äußere Rampischen Gasse (today: Pillnitzer Straße). A relief several meters long at the entrance gate, which Kühn created in 1826, is now in the restaurant of the Semperoper in Dresden.
Kühn was married to Juliane Mäcke, the marriage came from son Heinrich (1825-1893), the father of the photographer Heinrich Kühn . After Christian Gottlieb Kühn's death, Juliane Mäcke married Traugott Hultsch; the politician Theodor Hultzsch and the philologist Friedrich Hultsch came from this second marriage .
Kühn died in Dresden in 1828. His grave is in the Trinity cemetery there .
Works
Kühn worked mainly as a sculptor of gravestones. One of his best-known grave sculptures is the boy figure Mourning Genius with an extinguishing torch , which was originally located in the St. Pauli cemetery , then transferred to the church cemetery of the Loschwitz church and is now set up in the church itself due to weather conditions. Until 1863 there were two sandstone lions on the stairs of the Brühl Terrace , which Kühn had created in 1814. They had to give way to Johannes Schilling's four times of the day and are now in the Great Garden . Kühn also created the Moreau monument on (today's) Räcknitzhöhe, which Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer had designed. Also a copy of the bridge man from 1814 by him.
Mourning genius with a dying torch in the Loschwitz church
Dresden Moreau monument
Bridge man at the Augustus Bridge
Kühn was a close friend of the painter Caspar David Friedrich , of whom he made a portrait bust, which is exhibited today in the Museum of the Dresden Romanticism in Dresden. In 1808 he carved the golden frame for Friedrich's painting Cross in the Mountains , which as the Tetschen altar became an icon of Romantic art.
“The frame was made by the sculptor Kühn according to Mr. Friedrich's instructions. To the side the frame forms two Gothic columns. Palm branches rise from it and arch over the picture. In the palm branches are five angel heads, all of which look down adoringly at the cross. The evening star stands in the purest silver shine above the middle angel. Below is the all-seeing eye of God in an elongated filling, enclosed by the holy trident [and] surrounded by rays. Corn ears and vines bend on both sides towards the all-seeing eye and point to the body and blood of him who is attached to the cross. "
The aesthetics of the frame is a meaningful part of the total work of art and was also the object of criticism by Chamberlain Basilius von Ramdohr in the Ramdohr dispute . Ramdohr doubted the religious allegory of the landscape depicted by the picture frame . To the critic, who was caught up in the classicist ideal of art, the new romantic perception of art seemed completely alien.
“The frame that surrounds the picture needs to be mentioned here. It is directly related to the painting and is all the more an integral part of it, as without it the allegory would not be understandable at all and this frame itself constitutes the essay on the altar. [...] The frame has no relation to the picture. […] If you put this emblematic together with the allegory of the painting and consider the tendency of the whole thing, with the sacrifice of truth and taste, an inherently venerable, comforting, but not at all aesthetic idea of our religion: belief in the mysterious effects of the Lord's Supper sensualize [...]. "
literature
- Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-7913-0053-9 (catalog raisonné).
- Hilmar Frank: The Ramdohr dispute. Caspar David Friedrich's "Cross in the Mountains". In: Karl Möseneder (Ed.): Dispute about images. From Byzantium to Duchamp. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-496-01169-6 , pp. 141-160.
- City Lexicon Dresden . Verlag der Kunst, Basel 1994, p. 241.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Sigrid Hinz (ed.): Caspar David Friedrich in letters and confessions . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1974, p. 133
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kühn, Christian Gottlieb |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 16, 1780 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 20, 1828 |
| Place of death | Dresden |