Clement Moreau

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Erling Mandelmann : Clément Moreau (1979)

Clément Moreau (born March 26, 1903 near Koblenz am Rhein, † December 27, 1988 in Sirnach ), whose real name was Carl Josef Meffert , was a politically and socially committed commercial artist and artist. His main work is the linocut series Nacht über Deutschland .

Life

Carl Josef Meffert was born out of wedlock on March 26, 1903 in Koblenz . After a difficult childhood, he spent the years 1914 to 1918 as a welfare pupil in two institutions in Westphalia . Several attempts to break away failed.

In 1927 he moved to Berlin and came there a. a. in contact with Käthe Kollwitz , Emil Orlik , Heinrich Vogeler , Otto Nagel and John Heartfield . Thanks to their support, Meffert produced his first graphic works as well as book and magazine illustrations for the workers' press. A passionate relationship developed with Sonja Marchlewska, Heinrich Vogeler's wife, who had referred the drug addict at the time to Käthe Kollwitz. In 1928 he created the linocut cycles Unemployed Youth and Your Sister ; In the years 1928/1929 the twenty-part cycle of welfare education follows , which shows Meffert's experiences in welfare .

At the beginning of the thirties Meffert moved with his girlfriend Helen Ernst, with his friend, the painter Heinrich Vogeler , the graphic artist Heinz Lohmar and his wife Else, the painter Yoshida Blenk with her husband, the painter Eugen Früh , and the painter Heinz Otto and his Friend, Gudrun Engels, moved to Ronco sopra Ascona in Switzerland to help her friend Fritz Jordi set up the Ticino rural and artist cooperative Fontana Martina. After the National Socialists came to power in Germany , he visited Berlin one last time in early 1933 and barely escaped the Gestapo when he fled to Switzerland . Meffert lived as an illegal political emigrant in Switzerland until 1935 and from then on called himself Clément Moreau. To avoid the threat of arrest, Moreau traveled to Argentine exile in 1935, where he lived and worked until 1961. One of the most important works of anti-fascist exile art was created there in 1937/1938: the linocut cycle Nacht über Deutschland .

The political circumstances in Argentina forced Moreau to return to Switzerland in 1961. Here he lived in St. Gallen and Zurich , was a. a. active as a theater draftsman and drawing teacher. It was not until the 1970s that Moreau's artistic work gradually gained public attention. In 1982/83 his hometown honored him with the Culture Prize of the City of Koblenz. This was followed by exhibitions and honors such as the Culture Prize of the Swiss Trade Union Federation in 1987 and the Culture Prize of the German Trade Union Federation in 1988.

Clément Moreau died in Sirnach on December 27, 1988.

Work (selection)

List of linocut cycles and drawings:

  • Hamburg
Verlag Junge Garde, Berlin 1927
6 inscribed and signed linocuts.
  • cement
Berlin: Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf 1927/1928
9 inscribed and signed linocuts.
  • Your sister
Berlin: Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf 1928
7 inscribed and signed linocuts.
  • Unemployed youth
Berlin: Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf 1928
6 inscribed and signed linocuts.
  • Welfare education
Berlin: Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf 1929
19 inscribed and signed linocuts.
  • Proletarian art
Basel: Verlag der Genossenschafts-Buchdruckerei (end of 1932)
15 inscribed and signed linocuts
  • Fontana Martina
Printing house of Vorwärts , the newspaper of the Swiss Communist Party
13 signed linocuts with motifs from Meffert's stay in Fontana Martina.
  • Diary of the spy Edward Kent . Illustrations for Nikolaj G Smirnov's book of the same name, which was published in sequels in Basler Vorwärts from October 31, 1932 to January 31, 1933 in Basel, after it had appeared in the first edition of the International Workers Aid in Berlin.
8 signed lead cuts.
  • Big city pictures
at the Gutenberg Book Guild Zurich-Vienna-Prague, newly founded in exile : (Dec. 1933).
10 signed linocuts
  • 20 grabados de Clément Moreau
Buenos Aires: Ediciones Iman (ca.1936).
20 signed linocuts
  • Against the Nazism and the fascism
Buenos Aires, Argentinisches Tageblatt, 1938
26 drawings as well as 4 linocuts and lead cuts.
  • El que siembra viento recoge tempestades
Buenos Aires (ca.1941)
31 signed sheets (drawings) and 18 pages of text.
  • My fight
Texto de Adolfo Hitler
Cycle of over 100 drawings (around 1937) published in Argentine newspapers.
  • "La comedia humana " / "Night over Germany"
107 linocuts on Japanese paper (Gampi)
First publication in the "Argentinisches Tagblatt" and "ARGENTINA LIBRE" in 1940.
  • el chaco
Zurich 1963
12 signed linocuts.
  • Argentina
Zurich 1973
12 signed linocuts.
  • The bridge in the jungle
Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich Frankfurt Vienna, 1979
21 signed linocuts.
  • "A Lovestory"
5 linocuts.

expenditure

  • Clément Moreau / Carl Meffert. Graphics for fellow human beings . Editor Hanna Gagel; Guido Magnaguagno. Including a biography and a catalog raisonné. Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und Kunstamt Kreuzberg , Berlin, 1978. Volume for an exhibition of the same name at the Kunstamt Kreuzberg Berlin, March 17 to April 30, 1978.
  • Linocuts for Ignazio Silone . LitPol-Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-88279-018-0 .
  • With a pencil against fascism - 99 selected political caricatures from the years 1935 - 1945 . Selection + introduction by Guido Magnaguagno, LitPol-Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-88279-013-X .
  • Clément Moreau: Night over Germany. 107 linocuts from 1937-1938 . With a foreword by Heinrich Böll. Verlag Neue Münchner Galerie, 1976.
    • New edition: Clément Moreau: Night over Germany. 107 linocuts from 1937-1938 . EMG, Lübeck 2009 (publications of the Erich Mühsam Society 32).

literature

  • Dietrich Grünewald: Pictures speak without words. Carl Meffert / Clement Moreau . In: German Comic Research Yearbook 2011 . Comic + -Verlag Sackmann and Hörndl, Hildesheim 2010, pp. 64–76.
  • Werner Mittenzwei: Carl Meffert / Clement Moreau. A life in search of human brotherhood . Henschelverlag Berlin 1977
  • Dorothea Peters:  Moreau, Clément. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 94-96 ( digitized version ).
  • Resistance instead of adaptation. German art in the resistance against fascism 1933-1945 . Edited by the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, in collaboration with Elefanten Press, Berlin. Berlin 1980
  • Hermann Schnorbach: Clement Moreau's newspaper caricatures as a model for Hitler characters by Bertolt Brecht . In: Viktoria Hertling, Wulf Koepke, Jörg Thunecke (eds.): Hitler in sight. Literary satires and caricatures as a weapon against National Socialism . ARCO Verlag, Wuppertal 2005, pp. 175–192.
  • Hermann Schnorbach: Children flee from Hitler's World War. “Tim Tom and Mary” - a series of images by Carl Meffert / Clement Moreau . Dietmar Fölbach publishing house, Koblenz 2011
  • Rainer Zimmermann: Expressive realism. Painting of the Lost Generation , Hirmer, Munich 1994, p. 418

Web links

Commons : Clément Moreau  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Ilse Kleberger: One and the other dream. The life story of Heinrich Vogeler , Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim 1991, ISBN 3-407-80696-5 , p. 94 f.
  2. ^ Clément Moreau / Carl Meffert: Graphics for fellow men. With an incomplete catalog raisonné. New Society for Fine Arts and Art Office Kreuzberg Berlin, 1978, p. 294ff.
  3. ^ Linocut cycle of welfare education
personal data
SURNAME Moreau, Clement
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meffert, Carl Josef (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German commercial artist and artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Koblenz
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1988
Place of death Sirnach