Christof Drexel

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Hans Christof Drexel (born April 2, 1886 in Königstein im Taunus , † March 3, 1979 in Munich ) was a German painter and art teacher .

Life

From 1904 to 1905 Drexel studied architecture at the TH Munich and also created graphic works for the magazine Jugend . Fritz von Uhde recognized the student's artistic potential and suggested switching to painting. From 1906 to 1907 Drexel attended the Académie Julian in Paris. In the following years he undertook a longer study visit to Rome, traveled to England and again to France, where he visited Matisse . In 1911 he moved to Hagen in Westphalia and worked with the Folkwang group around Karl Ernst Osthaus . There he met Jan Thorn Prikker , Henry van de Velde , Emil Nolde and Christian Rohlfs , with whom he was friends. In the same year there was an exhibition at the Nassauischer Kunstverein in Wiesbaden, which showed Drexel's work together with works by Emil Nolde and Alexej von Jawlensky .

Drexel lived and worked in Berlin from 1923 to 1944. At the beginning he lived for a while with Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger in a shared apartment. From 1928 Drexel increasingly occupied himself with the art-pedagogical idea of ​​"choral drawing", which aimed to "trigger the innate genius of everyone". Encounters with Carl Gustav Jung in the 1930s deepened the aspect of physio-psychological group therapy.

In 1930 Drexel visited the artist Edvard Munch in Oslo. In 1932 he received the Villa Romana Prize. In 1937 Drexel was banned from exhibiting “ degenerate ” and lived primarily from his work as a color engineer and as an art teacher.

In 1944 Drexel fled Berlin to Hindelang in the Allgäu and settled in Munich in 1946. From 1947 he worked primarily as an art teacher at the Pedagogical Academies in Essen and Münster and devoted himself to colorful large-scale designs. This was followed by meetings with Hugo Kükelhaus , whose philosophy came very close to Drexel's concept of art. In the 1970s Drexel concentrated increasingly on the subject of "forms of being human". In 1975 he made the film Mask and Face , which the artist showed for the first time at the special exhibition Exempla in Munich.

The painter

Subjects, style and way of working

In his painterly work, which thematically primarily deals with people, animals and landscape, Drexel always took up the influences and tendencies of his time, but without becoming artistically dependent. The works of the early Folkwang period are characterized by expressionist design and large figurative compositions that also have socially critical content. At times he formally approached the Paris Matisse School. In the 1920s there was more internalization. Some works are reminiscent of Klee's work due to their pictorial structure and the inherent concentration on the invisible. In the 1950s, abstractions appeared more and more, and after 1970 at the latest Drexel concentrated on physiognomies and the representation of people.

Drexel is characterized by an intuitive way of working. He commented on the unconscious painting process in 1950: It was “a surprising spectacle to see the hands doing something with which the self has nothing to do with. It happens. I only have to move the brush. The picture has no work character, the work lies in front of the picture: in the intensity on which I have to concentrate; waiting for the right moment; if it is not there on the first line, it never happens. I never knew the study or the sketch; everything has a pictorial character from the outset. "

Image of man

Behind the numerous depictions of humans and the human face is a complex image of man, which Drexel usually captured in a concise, speaking form. People often have several faces and thus express their inner life, which is rich in contrast. In the numerous self-portraits that Drexel created, especially in his later years, he expressed his own complexity. Often he presented himself to the viewer as a cunning and cunning observer.

Position of the work

Especially before the Second World War , Drexel was in contact with the key personalities who shaped the development of art and art history in the 20th century: In addition to the Folkwang group around Karl Ernst Osthaus, he was in contact with Erich Heckel , Wassily Kandinsky , Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee , was in contact with Ludwig Justi , Ewald Mataré and Alfred Hentzen . The Nierendorf , Flechtheim and Cassirer galleries showed his works in the 1920s. Much appreciated as an artist during the Weimar period , his work was forgotten after the Second World War. The art-historical assessment of Drexel's importance for German Expressionism is still pending and is likely to be difficult, since only fragments of his Expressionist work have survived due to the losses in the Second World War.

The entire artist's estate with oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and graphics, as well as the press and photo documentation of his exhibitions and originals of his writings as well as dedications from his circle of friends is managed by KunstKontor Wiesbaden.

Art education

A group of 10 to 12 people is guided by rhythm and movement in the room to organically structured drawings on a wall surface. With this form of art education, artistic impulses and creative creative power are to be released. Drexel's idea of ​​“choral drawing” developed in the 1920s in a circle of friends. In 1932 he met CG Jung, who was said to be very fond of this form of art education. During the Second World War, Drexel used it in the naval hospital in Utrecht and developed it further.

Drexel himself described his method in 1950 as follows: “Choral drawing is about a controlled career in which the visible development can only be assessed as a passage or as a metamorphosis. In consciously renouncing the standards of marketable success, it aims to free up personal immediacy in the sense of autogenic training. The natural interplay of talents and the free physical mobility of the process generally result in a sociable detachment from which thematic dominant and personal variation come to unity in mutual fertilization. "

Movies

  • “Drawing game”: about choral drawing
  • Mask and Face (1975)

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1912 - Participation in the Cologne Sonderbund exhibition. ("Two Flowers", "Return of Modernity")
  • 1913 - Exhibition at the Folkwang Museum , Hagen
  • 1915 - Exhibition of the "Sketches from the Field" in the Folkwang Museum, Hagen
  • 1917 - "January-February exhibition" at the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden. Group exhibition with Emil Nolde, Hans Richter, Mely Joseph, Franz M. Jansen, Werner Heuser. With the works "Resurrection", "Rider", "Allee", "Mockery", "Entry into Jerusalem", "Prodigal Son", "Rider" and six colored drawings (sketches from the field?). All of this work can no longer be found.
  • 1921 - Exhibition in the Berlin gallery of Alfred Flechtheim
  • 1921 - Exhibition in Bonn
  • 1925 - Exhibition in the Berlin gallery of Goldschmidt and Wallerstein (with Kerschbaumer and Roeder)
  • 1931 - Exhibition at the Kunstverein Frankfurt am Main
  • 1931 - Exhibition at the Cologne Art Association
  • 1932 - Exhibition and purchase of works by the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin
  • 1932 - Exhibition in Königsberg
  • 1932 - Participation in the exhibition "Modern German Art" initiated by Munch in the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo
  • 1933 - Exhibition in the Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin with Otto Niemeyer-Holstein
  • 1935 - Exhibition at the Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin
  • 1937 - Two of his works are shown at the Munich exhibition "Degenerate Art"
  • 1948 - exhibition? Cologne, "Three painters and one architect"
  • 1951 - State Museum Oldenburg
  • 1954 - Osthaus Museum Hagen
  • 1954 - Folkwang Museum, Hagen
  • 1955 - Galerie Valentin, Stuttgart
  • 1956 - Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Hanna Becker vom Rath, Frankfurt
  • 1956 - Large art exhibition, Munich
  • 1958 - “The Independents” group, Munich
  • 1960 - Exhibition in the municipal gallery in Munich
  • 1962 - Gallery of the German Book Association, Karlsruhe
  • 1962 - Autumn Salon, House of Art , Munich
  • 1963 - The Munich Art Association
  • 1963 - Municipal Gallery, Oberhausen Castle
  • 1966 - Galerie von der Höh, Hamburg
  • 1966 - Lower Saxony State Museum for Art and Cultural History , Oldenburg
  • 1966 - The Kunstverein München eV
  • 1968 - Märklin Gallery, Stuttgart
  • 1970 - Galerie am Feuersee, Stuttgart
  • 1971 - TamS Gallery, Munich
  • 1971 - Hanna Bekker vom Rath gallery
  • 1971 - Exhibition in the Rahmhof Gallery, Frankfurt am Main
  • 1974 - Exhibition with watercolors and drawings in the Boehler Gallery, Bensheim.
  • 1975 - The film "Mask and Face" is shown at the special exhibition "Exempla" in Munich
  • 1976 - Exhibition for his 90th birthday in his birthplace Königstein
  • 1977 - Art exhibition at the State Museum of Ethnology , Munich
  • 1977 - Galerie van Laar, Munich
  • 1979 - Exhibition in the Munich City Museum
  • 1980 - Exhibition at the Munch Museum in Oslo
  • 1983 - Exhibition in the private bank Trinkaus and Burkhardt, Munich
  • 1980–1983 - Traveling exhibition by the Goethe Institute through 21 museums in North and South America
  • 1987 - Exhibition rooms of the Bayrische Hypotheken und Wechselbank, Munich
  • 1988 - Exhibition in the Leu Gallery, Rottach-Egern
  • 1989 - Exhibition at Karl and Faber, Munich
  • 1991 - Gallery Peter Fischinger, Stuttgart
  • 1995 - Municipal Gallery, “Return of Modernism”, Überlingen
  • 2002 - Kronberg Gallery, Kronberg
  • 2002 - SAFE, Frankfurt am Main
  • 2005 - Foundation of 1822, Frankfurter Sparkasse, Frankfurt am Main
  • 2006 - Nebbinsches Gartenhaus, Frankfurt am Main
  • 2007 - Exhibition in the private rooms of the art dealer Asher Edelman, New York
  • 2010 - Nebbinsches Gartenhaus, Frankfurt am Main
  • 2011 - Galerie Vayhinger, Radolfzell-Möggingen
  • 2012 - Art Karlsruhe, "One Artist Show", Galerie Vayhinger

literature

  • Arne Eggum : Hans Christof Drexel. En Glemt Tysk Ekspresjonist. In: Christof Drexel i Munch Museet. Oslo Kommunes Kunstsamlinger, Oslo 1979 (with German translation).
  • Gerhard Goetze (Ed.): Christof Drexel. 1886-1979. An Exhibition of the Goethe Institute. Goethe-Institut, Munich 1980 (there with a comprehensive bibliography).
  • KF Gotsch, Christof Drexel, Will Wohl: watercolors and drawings. Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne 1948.
  • Hubertus Günther: Christof Drexel. In: Weltkunst. Vol. 47, 1977, ISSN  0043-261X , p. 1502.
  • Wolfgang Petzet: The painter Christof Drexel. In: Art and the beautiful home. Vol. 48, No. 19, 1950, ISSN  0023-5423 , pp. 18ff.
  • Rike Wankmüller: Christof Drexels Menneskebild. In: Christof Drexel i Munch Museet. Oslo Kommunes Kunstsamlinger, Oslo 1979 (with German translation).
  • Wolfgang Wunderlich: Christof Drexel on his 85th birthday. In: The art and the beautiful home, Vol. 83, 1971, ISSN  0023-5423 , pp. 200-201.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: H. Günther: Christof Drexel. In: Die Weltkunst, vol. 47, issue 15, 1977, p. 1502.
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Wolfgang Petzet: The painter Christof Drexel. In: Art and the beautiful home. Vol. 19, 1950, p. 18ff, quotation p. 19.
  3. ↑ Quoted from: Petzet: The painter Christof Drexel. P. 19.
personal data
SURNAME Drexel, Christof
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Drexel, Hans Christof (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and art teacher
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Königstein im Taunus
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1979
Place of death Munich