Clemens Buscher
Clemens Buscher (born June 19, 1855 in Gamburg , † December 8, 1916 in Düsseldorf ) was a sculptor and wood carver .
Origin and career
His parents were Friedrich Buscher and Dorothea Buscher geb. Häfner. Clemens attended elementary school and helped out in the stonemasonry workshop, which his eldest son Karl Anton Coelestin Buscher took over after his father's early death in 1866. In 1872 Clemens Buscher began an apprenticeship as a stonemason and portraitist with the Kissinger sculptor Michael Arnold .
Clemens Buscher's first independent work can be found in 1874. After completing his apprenticeship, he initially worked as an assistant in Constance and Meran. Together with his brother Sebastian Buscher , who was six years older than him , he enrolled on January 11, 1876, for the subject of sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, where he became a student of Joseph Knabl and Syrius Eberle . Just a year later he was awarded the Great Medal by King Ludwig II . In 1880 he received a scholarship to spend two years in Italy. He then returned to Munich and lived temporarily with the architect Joseph Elsner , who supported both Clemens and his younger brother Thomas Buscher .
On April 1, 1883, Clemens Buscher was appointed as a specialist teacher for ornamental and figural modeling, wood carving and freehand drawing at the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts , where he was appointed (royal Prussian) professor in 1898. For health reasons, he gave up teaching in 1902, but continued to work as a freelancer.
His preferred material was bronze. In addition to numerous statues, monuments, busts and honorary gifts, he created the monumental statues of Emperor Wilhelm I in Mülheim (Cologne) (1898, 1943 melted down), Bochum (1904) and Frankfurt am Main (1891–1896). With his works, which are attributed to the idealizing style of historicism , he was extremely successful at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, but was later increasingly forgotten. Such as For example, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial in Frankfurt, some of his bronze memorial sculptures were melted down for armament purposes during World War II, as they were not considered to have any particular artistic value at the time.
Clemens Buscher is known to this day in his home town of Gamburg . For the town center he designed the so-called Hokemo fountain , which is reminiscent of an old Gamburger legendary figure (Hokemo dialect for hook man). As a tomb for his mother Dorothea, who died in 1888, he created a bronze bust, which was first exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris and then placed on the Gamburger family grave. There it was stolen by precious metal thieves in the 1970s.
Clemens Buscher was a member of several artistic associations, including the Düsseldorfer Malkastens , which he had co-founded, and for which he created the bust of the Düsseldorf landscape painter Andreas Achenbach . He was given honorary citizenship for his services to the home community of Gamburg .
Since 1893 Clemens Buscher was married to Theodora Budde (1866–1943), a daughter of the Düsseldorf painter Johann Bernhard Budde . Their only daughter, born in 1894, died in 1957.
His home town Werbach-Gamburg dedicated a museum to him and his brother Thomas, which opened in 2013, the Gamburger Buscher Museum.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Iris Brenner: Cologne Monuments 1871–1918. Aspects of bourgeois culture between art and politics . In: Werner Schäfke (Ed.): Publications of the Cologne City Museum . tape 5 . Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-927396-92-3 , p. 308 .
literature
- Heinz Bischof: Chronicle of the Buscher brothers. A forgotten German artist's fate. Tauberbischofsheim 1988, ISBN 3-924780-13-7 .
- M. Seidel: Buscher, Clemens . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 15, Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-22755-8 , p. 314.
- Charlotte Baumann-Hendriks, Adelheid Waschka: Thomas Buscher (1860–1937). Bavarian realism between neo-Gothic and neo-baroque. Exhibition catalog, Hallstadt 2007.
Web links
- Portrait of the sculptor Clemens Buscher, sign. 6.1. (18) 92 CG , painted by Carl Gehrts , Stadtmuseum Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Buscher, Clemens |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Buscher, Klemens |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor, wood carver and university professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 19, 1855 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 8, 1916 |
| Place of death | Dusseldorf |