Edeltraud Abel

Edeltraud Abel (born April 28, 1924 in Königsberg as Edeltraud Waldheuer ; † January 4, 1994 in Zurich ) was a German-Swiss painter and graphic artist.

biography

Edeltraud Waldheuer studied from 1941 to 1942 at the art and trade school in Königsberg (with Ernst Grün) and from 1942 to 1944 at the former art academy State Masters' Atelier for Fine Arts in Königsberg (with Eduard Bischoff and Norbert Dolezich ). In 1944 she was drafted into the flak. In 1945 she fled from the Russian troops via Swinoujscie and Berlin to Dresden and finally to Württemberg. In 1953 she was a drawing teacher in the Marienau State Education Center . 1957 drawing teacher at the girls' high school in Hildesheim . In 1959 she married Dr. Josef Abel from Augsburg, who was a school dentist in Zurich. In 1966 she received the Schwaben District Art Prize. She was a member of the Zurich Artists' Association and the Zinnober group.

Artistic work

Her work includes etchings, monotypes, lithographs, woodcuts, drawings and oil paintings.

The portraitist - the conversation with people

Edeltraud Abel's work is a continuous conversation with people in the immediate vicinity. Every personality that Edeltraud Abel-Waldheuer portrayed stands before us in its uniqueness and uniqueness: the Jewish religious philosopher Martin Buber , Katia Mann , the widow of the poet Thomas Mann , the pianist Adrian Aeschbacher , the Augsburg doctor Dr. Josef Abel, the artist's husband. Edeltraud Abel is one of the good portraitists of our time. She tried to capture the essence of the model in every portrait; the portrait resemblance arises from the connection between the inner image and the outer appearance of the person. Often, sketches and shorthand drawings preceded the valid portrait; Edeltraud Abel also practiced this quick recording in front of the television screen, where she put what she often saw on paper in a flash. The impressive series of depictions of people is a kind of personal vision of being, in that the models depicted are freed from accidental, superfluous and incidental details and reduced to their inner legality.

Monotypes for the Hasidic legends

In her younger years, Edeltraud Abel experienced the coexistence and coexistence of Christian and Jewish people in what was then the East Prussian metropolis of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). During this time Abel's interest in Jewish culture and the thinking of Martin Buber must have arisen. Martin Buber received the “ Peace Prize of the German Book Trade ” in 1953 . Edeltraud Abel heard Buber's speech on the radio. Buber's reflections on the subject of "Me and You" . She started reading Buber's works and became enthusiastic about the Hasidic legends. A whole cycle of impressive monotypes was created . Edeltraud Abel was a master in the technique of the monotype and achieved a high level of mastery in the mastery of artistic design media. A monotype is created by directly marking a printing plate with a printable material (printing ink, printing ink) and then also taking an impression on paper. However, such a print cannot be repeated and each print is unique. Thus the monotype stands between drawing and graphic . The dramaturgical design using subtle shades of gray up to night black and the rhythmization of the leaves through the targeted use of line drawings and pasty structures, which are reduced to the bare essentials, gives the leaves liveliness and depth. What fascinated Abel, the devout Christian, about the Hasidic legends is the attempt to bring God into the world; God not as a distant, inaccessible entity, but to shape life in such a way that it becomes a permanent, realistic dialogue between man and God.

Art as coping

Many works are a personal way of coping. This also includes the incomprehensible, the reality slumbering behind the visible reality. This can also be demonstrated with the landscape motifs. There, the painter was never concerned with the naturalistic rendering of what she saw alone. The pictorial capture and domestication of reality, the high sensitivity of her being, her own humanity, her empathy with all beings - with humans, animals, flora, landscape - Edeltraud Abel has for the great existence of nature and the transcendental forces that work in it open. The artist managed to say more with just a few strokes than many words can. In the best papers she managed to remind us of what makes life always worth living: cheerfulness of the soul, affirmation of the absurd, love of people, striving for perfection. With her pictures Edeltraud Abel repeatedly confirmed her desire to thematize the "climbing game of life", as she called it. Edeltraud Abel believed in the task of art to increase the human substance in the world. A task that Edeltraud Abel developed in her own way after the abstruse aberrations of the Second World War .

Exhibitions (selection)

Some exhibitions in the Zurich Rotapfel Galerie , the Goethe-Institut in Dublin , Munich , Kempten and Istanbul are listed below.

• 1969: Monotype The Fratricide , Large Art Exhibition Munich
• 1972: Rotapfel-Galerie Zürich (together with Rosemarie Winteler and Anna-Marie Bodmer)
• 1973: Gallery at the Kornhaus Bremgarten
• 1976: Rotapfel-Galerie Zürich (together with Paul Franken)
• 1979: Rotapfel-Galerie Zurich
• 2010: Memorial exhibition (together with works by Engelbert Helmut Stephani) in the Stephani house in Pommertsweiler
• 2015/2016: From afar. Edeltraud Abel's illustrations for Martin Buber's stories about the Hasidim. Exhibition in the Jewish Culture Museum Augsburg-Swabia

Web links

• Website about Edeltraud Abel
• Abel, Edeltraud. In: Sikart
• Edeltraud Abel in the German biography
• Abel at eART

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Exhibition calendar . In: Das Werk: Architektur und Kunst = L'oeuvre: architecture et art 59 issue 7. 1972, accessed on December 22, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Exhibition calendar 4/1973. In: Das Werk: Architektur und Kunst = L'oeuvre: architecture et art. 1973, accessed December 22, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Picture show pays tribute to Edeltraud Abel. In: Swabian. Retrieved April 15, 2010 . 
4. ↑ Benigna Schönhagen (Ed.): From a distance. Edeltraud Abel's illustrations for Martin Buber's stories about the Hasidim . Jewish Culture Museum Augsburg-Schwaben, Augsburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-9814958-8-1 .