Dolly Rudeman

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Dolly Rüdeman , also Dolly Rudeman , (* on February 3, 1902 in Salatiga , Java , Dutch East Indies ; † on January 26, 1980 in Amsterdam ; full name: Gustave Adolphine Wilhelmina Rüdeman ) was a Dutch graphic artist , poster artist , illustrator and author of children's books. In the 1920s, she was the only woman who designed movie posters in the Netherlands. An important part of the development of Dutch poster art is ascribed to her.

Life

Dolly Rüdeman was born as the second daughter of the manager of a sugar factory in Salatiga on Java. Her father, Adolf P. Rüdemann, died half a year before she was born. Her mother Gerardina C. van Elsbroek later married the Dutch army officer Karel GR Joosten and the family initially lived in Batavia . After the stepfather's retirement, the family moved to The Hague in October 1916 . Dolly attended high school there for two years and took drawing lessons at the same time. Rüdeman never spoke in interviews about her childhood and youth in the Dutch East Indies. In her work, echoes of her years in the Dutch East Indies appear only in her poster series for the documentary film Mataram by the ethnologist Tassilo Adam .

In the war year 1941, Dolly Rüdeman had to leave The Hague because of Allied bombing raids and move to Amsterdam temporarily. She soon returned, but moved again and permanently to Amsterdam in 1944. There she lived with a cousin in the Beethovenstraat, where she also had a studio. In 1944, according to a relative, she hid a Jewish family in her apartment who thus survived the Shoah . Rüdeman lived with her cousin in the Beethovenstraat until her death. She ran a hospitable household, loved to cook Indonesian dishes, and although she had no children, there were numerous visitors at her Christmas dinners and other occasions. Until his death in 1955, this included Barend Lugard, with whom she was always on friendly terms, and two friends from her student days, the painter Lodewijk Bruckman and his twin brother Karel.

Dolly Rüdeman died on 26 January 1980 in Amsterdam at an emphysema . Her entire estate with drawings and documents was disposed of in the following year after the death of her cousin and is therefore considered lost.

education

Poster for the international advertising show, unknown designer, Berlin 1929

After graduating from high school, Rüdeman studied drawing for five years at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten ( German Royal Academy of Fine Arts ) in The Hague. Although both studied in different years, she was acquainted with the graphic artist and illustrator Jan Lavies . Rüdeman completed her studies in August 1922 with the teaching examination. However, she aspired to work as an advertising artist and traveled to Great Britain to take lessons from the illustrator and cartoonist Charles Crombie .

In 1927, the French poster artist AM Cassandre caused a sensation in the Netherlands with a poster for the Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam Étoile du Nord express train and received a number of other commissions from important Dutch customers. Rüdeman was impressed by Cassandre's work, traveled to Paris for three months to meet him and worked part-time in his studio. During this time, Rüdeman's poster Circus was created for the film of the same name (German: Der Zirkus ) with Charlie Chaplin . Rüdeman later stated that the Circus was created under Cassandre's influence and that this also influenced her further work. However, she works under different framework conditions; while Cassandre sometimes spent more than a month working on a poster, she only had two or three days.

In 1929, Rüdeman traveled to Germany, initially to Berlin, where the international advertising show took place from August 10 to September 8 . Her next stop was the exhibition The International Poster in Munich, which lasted from August 17 to September 17, 1929. In the Dutch section, twelve of her film posters were shown alongside works by Bart van der Leck and AM Cassandre. In Munich she had the opportunity to study with the graphic and poster artist Ludwig Hohlwein . His way of working, designing posters on the basis of photographs, seems to have influenced Rüdeman's working style from 1929 onwards.

Artistic work

First work

After returning from her studies in Great Britain, Rüdeman opened her own studio in The Hague. First she made all kinds of portrait drawings and illustrations and gave private lessons as a drawing teacher. Her first posters were announcement posters for performances by the dancer La Argentina in the Kurhaus Scheveningen in July 1926 and for the Carnaval masked ball ! in the same place the following month. In those first years she worked as an illustrator for magazines such as Nova, Favoriet, Deze Week, the cultural magazine De Prins and the automobile magazine De Auto. One of the authors of De Auto was Barend Evert Lugard (1868–1955), in previous years one of the founders and owners of Verwey & Lugard's Automobiel-Maatschappij . This company manufactured automobiles until 1908, was active as an importer of vehicles for the manufacturers Fiat and Peugeot until 1913 and had business relationships in the Dutch East Indies. It is unclear whether the joint connections to the Dutch East Indies played a role in the cooperation between Rüdeman and Lugard. In any case, Rudeman often illustrated Lugard's articles, and Lugard was of decisive importance for her further career.

In 1925 Barend Lugard became managing director of the Dutch film company Nederlandse Bioscooptrust (NBT). At the beginning of 1926 Dolly Rüdeman began to illustrate the weekly programs for NBT. One of the first significant work for which she received public recognition was in March 1926 the furnishing of the modernized large cinema Cinema Palace on the Grote Markt in Groningen. There she designed the wall decorations and the lampshades.

Potemkin Movie Poster

The film Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein, which was shown in Dutch cinemas from September 10, 1926, had already been eagerly awaited by the audience. In France, Great Britain, Belgium and other countries the film had already been banned by the censors, in Germany it could only be shown under strict censorship conditions. In the Netherlands, Nijmegen and Bussum had issued performance bans under pressure from conservative political associations. Abraham Tuschinski , the owner of the nationally important Amsterdam Tuschinski Theater and other cinemas in Rotterdam, refused to show the film.

After seeing the film, Barend Lugard decided to bring the Battleship Potemkin to Dutch cinemas. At that time, films in the Netherlands were mostly advertised with clumsily designed posters; the poster design was considered "at the mercy of the barbarians". Often artistically designed foreign film posters were procured and their text lines were overwritten with information in Dutch. Lugard commissioned the completely unknown Dolly Rüdeman to design the poster for the armored cruiser Potemkin and had 7,500 of them printed. Barend had an overwhelming success with the screening of the film, and the scheduled duration of the show had to be repeatedly extended. The film posters, which were distributed in large numbers, also made Dolly Rüdeman well known. The Mayor of Amsterdam temporarily banned the poster while the Institute of Fine Arts in The Hague asked for a copy for its collection.

Unlike her Russian colleagues Alexander Rodtschenko , Anton Lawinski and the Stenberg brothers , who designed posters for the film on behalf of the state, Rüdeman did not focus on technology such as the warship and its guns or heroic figures. Your work was an implementation of the film's staircase scene, which has entered the collective memory like hardly any other film scene. In front of a flat yellow and red glowing background, the motif depicts a soldier outlined in rough lines, his rifle with his bayonet raised, and a dying revolutionary at his feet. The text of the poster consists only of the word POTEMKIN at the bottom, the white letters of which are colored blood red from above.

The Dutch daily Het Vaderland wrote about Rüdeman's poster for the armored cruiser Potemkin on August 31, 1926, that it was very different from the usual movie posters. “An artist” worked here who was almost on a par with those who made the film. A few days later, the author expressed his surprise that the alleged artist was a young woman from The Hague who had only recently started to deal with poster art. A Dutch cultural journalist noted in 1926 that women's works mostly have a “feminine” appearance, with a pleasant subject, clear colors and a little dreamy. Strong lines and expressiveness are less common to women. Rüdeman's work does not correspond to this picture.

Nederlandse Bioscooptrust

The Nederlandse Bioscooptrust was founded in 1921 as an association of film distributors and cinema operators with significant participation by Loet Barnstijn . The NBT consisted of three departments, the film production, which mainly produced advertising films, the film distribution, which distributed the major films of the major Hollywood studios in the Netherlands, and the cinema. The NBT had its own printing company, J. Strang & Co., which printed the movie posters and other advertising material and sold the designs to the NBT in weekly conferences.

Due to the great success of her Potemkin poster , Rüdeman got a permanent job at J. Strang & Co. to design the NBT film posters. After a short time she was considered the most important poster designer in the company. In addition, their designs were often taken into account because Rüdeman basically put two designs on one print sheet and preferred the inexpensive three-color printing. In contrast, their image design often deviated from the wishes of film theater operators. While these preferred realistic portraits of glamorous women in line with popular taste, Rüdeman preferred angular depictions of men and artistically valuable depictions. In addition, Rüdeman's work for the UFA , whose films were extremely popular in the Netherlands, was too expensive. Nevertheless, with the financial security through the employment, Rüdeman was able to concentrate on the design of film posters. In the course of her career she designed posters for films with numerous well-known leading actors such as Marlene Dietrich , Buster Keaton , Greta Garbo , Asta Nielsen and Charlie Chaplin. Her works were created on the basis of content information and occasionally individual images of the films, although there was little scope for design because of the space required by the texts and the work was carried out under great time pressure. Rüdeman often focused on the main actors and combined their realistic representation with a suggestive environment. Some of her works, mostly posters for film comedies, are also characterized by the caricature-like exaggeration of the leading actors.

On October 17, 1927, J. Strang & Co. organized an exhibition of movie posters in the Tuschinski Theater in Amsterdam. Most of the posters on display came from Dolly Rüdeman, and the exhibition was a great success for her. Rüdeman's work has received favorable comments from a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including film industry magazines and popular women's magazines such as De vrouw in haar huis and Het Rijk der Vrouw, published in Belgium . In addition, the Bioscooptrust's efforts to produce high-quality posters were recognized in the newspapers , and Rüdeman's role in Dutch poster art was highlighted. The influential film critic of Het Vaderland, Luc Williken , gave a speech at the exhibition in which he called for more freedom for the artists. The trade journal De Reclame praised male Mans posters for Dirnentragödie with Asta Nielsen and the three posters for Mataram detail, but criticized the fact that the duration of the exhibition was measured with a half-day short. Just two weeks later, J. Strang & Co. organized another exhibition in the Amsterdam Hotel Krasnapolsky , in which Rüdeman's posters were again primarily shown. The managing director of J. Strang & Co. called the second exhibition a reaction to the great success of the first and proudly quoted the positive coverage in the press.

In March 1928, Rüdeman's film poster for Charlie Chaplin's The Circus was the first film poster to be approved by the newly appointed Dutch film inspection agency . The NBT initially rejected the draft. In the same year the poster was included in the yearbook of the Vereeniging voor Ambachts- en Nijverheidskunst (VANK) (German Association for Crafts and Industrial Art ), in which works by Piet Zwart , Vilmos Huszár and Hendrik Wijdeveld were also printed. Rüdeman was associated with the socialist-oriented VANK, but it is not known whether she was a member of this association. Several times she accepted commissions from public authorities, and one of her works was a poster design for a conservative campaign against unilateral disarmament. However, Rüdeman never spoke about her political convictions in public, and it is likely that these assignments were of no particular significance to her.

Even before the global economic crisis began , the film industry in the Netherlands was in a difficult economic situation. The introduction of the sound film required large investments on the part of the cinema operators, at the same time the costs for purchasing the films in Hollywood rose sharply. In July 1929 the Bioscooptrust began to fall apart. The outsourced areas of film production and cinema operations were initially independent and later bought up by the Tuschinski Group. According to the journal Nieuw Weekblad voor de Cinematografie , J. Strang & Co. was sold to the Van de Ven printing company, which Rüdeman continued to employ as a poster designer. However, only the 1930 film poster for The Cossacks with John Gilbert can be identified as Rüdeman's work for this printing company .

According to the Bioscooptrust

Kunstsaal Kleijkamp , The Hague, around 1942
Wendingen , cover graphic of the February 1931 issue

Rüdeman continued her artistic work and created posters for other clients, which were often printed by the van Daalen print shop in Haarlem. From February 14th to March 5th, 1931, an exhibition of her work took place in the exclusive Kleijkamp art hall in The Hague, which in turn was opened by Luc Willink. To be invited to the Kunstsaal Kleijkamp was a privilege and was seen not only as recognition of Dolly Rüdeman, but also of poster art as a whole. In addition to film posters, portrait drawings, other illustrations and decorative works by Rüdeman were also exhibited. A catalog was published for the exhibition and both prints for 1.50 to 10 guilders and originals at prices of 75 to 500 guilders were offered for sale. For the first time, criticism was heard in the media. One critic pointed out that the majority of Rüdeman's works by no means stood out from the crowd, but clearly showed their submission to the demands of the market. Another pointed out that the film business and an artist's individuality are mutually exclusive. The exhibition in the Kunstsaal Kleijkamp marked the high point of Rüdeman's artistic career. Around the same time, an issue of the Dutch architecture and art magazine Wendingen appeared under the title Nederlandsche Affiches (German Dutch posters ), in which works by Rüdeman were presented alongside those by artists such as Chris Lebeau , Hendrik Wijdeveld and Paul Schuitema .

With the disintegration of the Bioscooptrust and the separation from J. Strang & Co., Dolly Rüdeman no longer had a close connection to the film industry. By then she had designed around 150 film posters and 70 programs for J. Strang & Co. and the Bioscooptrust and had a great influence on Dutch poster art. According to her own statements, she had designed more than 250 movie posters. In 1933 she designed her last movie poster for Don Quixote , a French film directed by GW Pabst .

In addition to her work as a poster designer, Rüdeman continued to work as an illustrator for various magazines. She also designed letterheads, packaging and promotional items. Their calendars attracted particular attention, such as an office calendar published in 1927 for a building materials trade. From 1930 Rüdeman worked for the American Petroleum Company , the Dutch-Belgian sister company of the German-American Petroleum Society . One of her works was a luxurious office calendar published in two parts for 1934, about which, in the context of a positive evaluation, it was only critically noted that his illustrations would have been far more effective as posters.

National Feestrok from 1946, embroidered on the lower edge “5 MEI 1945” as the day of liberation

The shortage of paper during the Second World War and the circumstances of the German occupation of the Netherlands brought the production of advertising material to a near standstill. After the Second World War, Dolly Rüdeman initially mainly dealt with portraits, watercolors and postcard designs . Your first poster after the liberation advertised the Nationale Feestrok in 1946 . This was followed by posters for various clients until the 1950s, including the Royal Dutch Motorsport Federation, for whose races she had designed posters before the war. Economically she was doing very well and through Barend Lugard she won numerous customers.

In the 1950s, Rüdeman began working for the Dutch printing company Mulder & Zoon, which specialized in the decoration of stoneware. An American company produced milk jugs, beer mugs, flower vases and wall plates with decorations from Rüdeman, which depicted birds, flowers and trees as symbols of the states. These objects are still often offered on auction platforms and collectors' markets today, but in their pleasing nature they have no reference to Rüdeman's early work. The same applies to numerous illustrated children's books published by Mulder from the 1960s onwards. Outstanding among them was an edition of eight fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen illustrated by Rüdeman . She then wrote and illustrated her own series of children's books, almost all of which were also published in German. In addition, some titles have been published in English, French and several other languages. Rüdeman's collaboration with Mulders ended in the early 1970s, and further editions of her books continued to appear years after her death. Most recently, Dolly Rüdeman worked on portraits of children for private customers.

Rediscovery

As late as 1957 male Mans for 30 years before Resulting poster for the film Dirnentragödie shown at an exhibition of movie posters in The Hague and as an example of artistically valuable film posters in the press. Subsequently, she was forgotten as a poster artist, and not a single obituary appeared on the occasion of her death.

With the growing interest in historical poster art towards the end of the 20th century, interest in the work of Dolly Rüdeman reawakened. By 2005, more than half of their film posters could be found, but the existence of a large part has only been passed down through contemporary media reports. From September to November 2005, an exhibition of Dolly Rüdeman's posters took place in The Hague, for which two connoisseurs of early 20th century poster art wrote an accompanying book.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marjan Groot: Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, p. 526, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3Dkf_A8YENhRQC~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA526~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  2. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, pp. 9-10.
  3. ↑ a b c d Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 22.
  4. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, pp. 22-23.
  5. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 10.
  6. ↑ a b c d e K. de R. (Kate de Ridder): Bij Dolly Rüdeman. De eenige Hollandsche vrouw who advertise the "posters" . In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of March 2, 1929, p. 1 D (interview).
  7. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, pp. 16-17.
  8. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 18.
  9. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 21.
  10. ↑ a b c d Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Het Potemkin-affiche In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of September 8, 1926, p. 2 B.
  11. ↑ a b c d Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 11.
  12. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 8.
  13. ^ A b Anonymous: Reclame-Tentoonstelling ANV Kurhaus. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of September 3, 1927, p. 1 A.
  14. ↑ a b c d J. G. de Haas: Art en Letteren. Kroniek 381. Film-Affiches In: Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, edition of March 7, 1931, pp. 15-16.
  15. ↑ Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, pp. 6-7.
  16. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of August 31, 1926, p. 2 B.
  17. ↑ Marjan Groot: Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, p. 321, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3Dkf_A8YENhRQC~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA321~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  18. ↑ Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, pp. 13-14.
  19. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 14.
  20. ↑ a b c Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 16.
  21. ↑ a b c Marjan Groot: Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, p. 318, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3Dkf_A8YENhRQC~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA318~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  22. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Modern film affiches. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of October 18, 1927, p. 2 B.
  23. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Affiche Circus. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of March 26, 1928, p. 2 C.
  24. ↑ Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 12.
  25. ↑ Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 15.
  26. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Nederlandsche Ambachts- en Nijverheidskunst. In: Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, evening edition of December 13, 1928, p. 1 B.
  27. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Expositie film affiches. Dolly Rüdeman at Kleijkamp. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of February 14, 1931, p. 1 C.
  28. ↑ Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, pp. 19-20.
  29. ↑ a b Bastiaan Anink and Paul van Yperen: Pioneer of the Dutch film poster, p. 20.
  30. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Calendar. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of December 22, 1933, p. 1 C.
  31. ↑ Anonymous: Kunst en Letteren. Calendar. In: Het Vaderland, evening edition of May 30, 1934, p. 1 C.
  32. ↑ Ber Hulsing: Affiche en film. Poolse affiches de best. In: De Waarheid, June 21, 1957, p. 4.
personal data
SURNAME Rudeman, Dolly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rudeman, Dolly (spelling different); Rüdeman, Gustave Adolphine Wilhelmina (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch graphic and poster artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Salatiga
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1980
Place of death Amsterdam