Curt Querner

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Quernerhaus in Börnchen

Curt Querner (born April 7, 1904 in Börnchen , † March 10, 1976 in Kreischa ) was a representative of the New Objectivity as a painter . Throughout his life he was committed to realism in his basic artistic concept .

Life

Curt Querner's parents were both deaf; he himself attributed to this in no small part the fact that he learned to see the world with his eyes. After completing his locksmith apprenticeship and the trade school in Freital in 1921, he worked as a factory locksmith in Glashütte , Freital and Bannewitz .

In 1926 Querner began to study at the Dresden Art Academy . He took painting classes with Richard Müller , Georg Lührig and Otto Dix . Although Querner only studied a few months in Otto Dix's painting class, Querner is one of the most famous Dix students today.

Querner financed his studies by working in a rope factory and as a peddler for rope goods. He made the way from his parents' house in Börnchen to the art academy in Dresden on foot. Under the impression of the increasing politicization of society, Querner left the academy prematurely in 1930 and joined the artist group Asso and the KPD in order, like many of his colleagues, to become more politically active. In January 1931 he had his first exhibition in the Gallery Young Art of Josef Sandel in Dresden. He later resigned from the KPD and never rejoined a political party.

In 1933 he married Regina Dodel, the sister of his college friend and painter Wilhelm Dodel . In the same year his daughter Yvonne was born. While visiting the exhibition "Reflections of Decline in Art" he was arrested and spent three days in detention.

From 1932 to 1937 Querner lived on unemployment benefits, although he painted a picture practically every day. He often worked outdoors, regardless of the weather. His motifs were landscapes of the Vorerzgebirge around his hometown Börnchen as well as village motifs such as farmhouses or farmers at work. There were also works based on urban motifs from the poor suburbs of Dresden. He repeatedly painted the many portraits based on the same models. Because of his poverty, he could only invite the models who asked the least money. They were peasant women and children from his home village Börnchen, but also from the neighborhood of his poor suburban quarter. Due to his material need, only a few oil paintings were created during this time. The oil paintings from the 1930s are among his main works. He had acquired the painting technique of Verism and measured himself against Lucas Cranach in his diaries. His preferred painting styles were watercolors and drawings until the end of his life . When painting watercolors, he developed a wet-on-wet technique that became characteristic of all of his later work.

In 1940 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht , came to Norway in 1943 and from 1945 to 1947 a French prisoner of war. In 1947 he returned to his family in Börnchen because his Dresden apartment had been bombed out . Querner lost a large part of his work with his city studio.

Even after his return from captivity, Querner was only able to make a living from his pictures with great difficulty. At the end of the 1940s, important pictures a. a. Acquired by the Nationalgalerie Berlin and the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden . In addition, he received several public contracts for building design and had several public exhibitions in the 1950s, but was not admitted to the art exhibition of the GDR in 1953. It was not until the early 1960s that the GDR's official art establishment (re) discovered him as a proletarian revolutionary artist. At the same time, his artistic recognition among the Dresden public and beyond, which was evident in both painting commissions and sales of his freely created works. Thus the lifelong material hardship was finally averted.

Querner was an artist who valued independence. He also demanded his own high standards of artistic quality and personal integrity from others. With these claims he set himself apart from the state-official art business and had a strict judgment against his painting colleagues.

Throughout his life he was very close friends with the Freital honorary citizen Hellmuth Heinz (1904–1994).

In 2000 he was voted one of the “100 Dresdeners of the 20th Century” in the daily newspaper “ Dresdner Latest News ”.

Awards

Exhibitions

  • Curt Querner - Exhibition for the 50th birthday. Freital City Council, 1954
  • Curt Querner. Paintings - drawings - watercolors, 1926 to 1963. Kulturhistorisches Museum Magdeburg , 1963
  • New acquisitions by the Freital Municipal Art Collection. 100th special exhibition in the Haus der Heimat Freital 1966
  • The landscape of the Freital district in contemporary visual arts. House of Homeland Freital, 1967
  • About becoming the new person. The image of man in Dresden art 1946-1971. Dresden State Art Collections , 1971
  • Curt Querner. Watercolors and drawings, 1927 to 1972. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett , 1972
  • Curt Querner. Paintings and watercolors. Exhibition under the patronage of the GDR Embassy in Vienna, Vienna 1973
  • Curt Querner. Exhibition on the occasion of his 70th birthday. State Museum Schwerin , 1974
  • Curt Querner - 70 years. Drawings and watercolors. House of Homeland Freital, 1974
  • Curt Querner 1904-1976. Paintings, watercolors, drawings. Künstlerhaus Vienna , 1979
  • Curt Querner - 1904-1976. Oil paintings, watercolors, drawings. House of Homeland Freital, 1979
  • Curt Querner. Paintings, drawings, watercolors. 80th birthday commemorative exhibition. Galerie Rähnitzgasse Dresden, 1984
  • Curt Querner 1928-1975. Painting, watercolors and drawings. On the occasion of the artist's 80th birthday. Gallery at Sachsenplatz Leipzig, 1984
  • Curt Querner. Watercolors and drawings. Central Institute for Nuclear Research Rossendorf near Dresden, 1987
  • Curt Querner, painting and drawings. Staudenhofgalerie Potsdam, 1988
  • Curt Querner, watercolors, drawings, paintings. Gallery A Berlin, 1988
  • Curt Querner 1904–1976, paintings, watercolors, drawings. Art collection Gera and Otto-Dix-Haus Hemmenhofen , 1999
  • Curt Querner in the Eastern Ore Mountains. Museum Osterzgebirgsgalerie in Dippoldiswalde Castle , 2000
  • Curt Querner - The painterly work. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister , April 8 to July 26, 2004
  • New objectivity in Dresden. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister, October 1, 2011 to January 8, 2012

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Curt Querner . In: Birgit Dalbajewa (ed.): New Objectivity in Dresden . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-57-4 , p. 281 .
  2. ↑ Manja Seelen: Curt Querner . In: The image of women in the works of German artists of the new objectivity . Lit, Münster 1995, ISBN 978-3-8258-2531-7 , pp. 169 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ 100 Dresden residents of the 20th century . In: Dresdner Latest News . Dresdner Nachrichten GmbH & Co. KG, Dresden December 31, 1999, p. 22 .
  4. ↑ Birgit Dalbajewa (Ed.): New Objectivity in Dresden . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-57-4 , p. 132, 167, 281 ff . (Catalog for the exhibition).
personal data
SURNAME Querner, Curt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Börnchen , Saxony , Germany
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1976
Place of death Kreischa , GDR