Dresden artist dispute
The Dresden artists' dispute was a controversy against the background of a split in the artistic community into conservative and reform-minded forces with regard to the development of German painting and the arts and crafts at the beginning of the 20th century . The controversy reached its climax between 1907 and 1909 as a public dispute over the alleged preference given to members of the guild artists' association in awarding public works contracts.
prehistory
As early as 1893, with the Free Association of Dresden Artists and the subsequent Association of Fine Artists Dresden around Gotthardt Kuehl , Carl Bantzer and Otto Gussmann, there was an initial split between the artists and the public, on the one hand defending a conservative, academic painting style with a traditional history - , landscape and portraiture , and secondly followers of new trends such as the open-air painting , the Impressionism and Art Nouveau . Numerous artists of the traditionally set Dresden Art Cooperative joined these new artist associations.
After the turn of the century and in the course of the participation of Saxon artists in the 1904 World Exhibition in St. Louis as well as the preparations for the Third German Applied Arts Exhibition in Dresden in 1906 , the artist associations Die Elbier , Brücke , Die Zunft , die Mappe and the Exhibitors Association Dresden-Trachau came to an end further start-ups of artist groups in Dresden . Again numerous members of the Dresden Art Cooperative migrated to these new associations.
Also around the turn of the century, reform-oriented arts and crafts workshops emerged in Dresden, such as the Dresden workshops for craftsmanship by Karl Schmidt-Hellerau and the workshops for German household items by Theophil Müller in Dresden-Striesen . From 1901 to 1908, the new building for the Dresden Academy of Applied Arts, designed by William Lossow and Hermann Viehweger , was built . Reform-oriented teachers such as Karl Groß , Erich Kleinhempel and Oskar Seyffert taught at the arts and crafts school . During this time, Dresden advanced to become one of the most important centers for progressive painters and artisans.
At the same time, the influence of reformist forces on the city authorities grew. In 1904, Hans Erlwein was appointed city planning officer in Dresden . Erlwein was together with Karl Groß founder of the artists' association Die Zunft .
These developments posed an artistic and economic threat to the conservative representatives. They publicly criticized the new artists' associations. The guild , in particular , with its chairman and town planning officer Hans Erlwein, was caught in the crossfire of criticism.
Dresden artist dispute
In 1908, the dispute escalated when nineteen Dresden artists under the leadership of Richard Daniel Fabricius , best known for his work of throwing a ball in front of the Hygiene Museum , lodged a complaint against the municipal building department and Hans Erlwein as town planning officer. Participated in the objection were u. a. also the former guild members Richard Guhr and Josef Goller , as well as Erich Hösel , Georg Müller-Breslau and August Schreitmüller . The group signed the complaint under the title "long-established Dresden artists". They demanded that public contracts should be awarded through competitive tenders in an impartial manner, regardless of membership of the artists' association Die Zunft . The complaint was rejected by the city administration after a personal answer for formal reasons, since the complaint by the complainants led by lawyer Giese was also published in the Dresdner Anzeiger at the same time.
In retrospect, it can be said that Erlwein's decisions never served to achieve personal advantages, but were always guided by motives in terms of content. Erlwein tried with his reform-oriented idea of "functionality, clarity, simplicity, structure of the structure and the integration into the environment" to allow only the best building quality for Dresden.
Erlwein then gave up the chairmanship of the guild in order not to let the still subliminally fermenting artist dispute escalate. In addition, the Dresden Artists' Association was formed from the ranks of the guild , the former Elbe , the guild and a number of outside artists on November 6, 1909, chaired by Georg Wrba . With this amalgamation, the Dresden reform movement was placed on an even broader basis and the guild withdrew from its conservative opponents the attack surface by appearing at least externally as the Dresden Artists' Association .
See also
literature
- Uwe Schieferdecker : The Dresden artist dispute. Controversial award behavior of the city . In: Dresden. He gave the cityscape a face - Hans Erlwein . Herkules-Verlag, Kassel 2011, ISBN 978-3-941499-64-5 , p. 33-35 .
- Petra Klara Gamke: Karl Groß. Tradition as innovation? Dresden reform art at the beginning of modernism . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-422-06488-5 , p. 43-44 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gertrud Kleinhempel (1875–1948). Professor and Designer. Internet portal Westphalian history. Retrieved January 2, 2016 .
- ^ Uwe Schieferdecker: The Dresden artist dispute. Controversial award behavior of the city . In: Dresden. He gave the cityscape a face - Hans Erlwein . Herkules-Verlag, Kassel 2011, ISBN 978-3-941499-64-5 , p. 33-35 .
- ↑ The association Die Gilde, founded on April 4, 1907, was a primarily economic association of arts and crafts. See Gamke (2005), p. 44