Edgar Jené

Edgar (actually Erhard) Jené (born March 4, 1904 in Saarbrücken - Malstatt ; † June 15, 1984 in La Chapelle St. André , France ) was a German-French painter, graphic artist and important surrealist .

biography

1922–1924 Edgar Jené studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . In 1924/25 he took up studies at the École nationale des beaux-arts , the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. He lived there until his return to Saarbrücken in 1928, where he worked as a freelance artist until 1935.

In 1929 he married Charlotte ("Coco") Pfaller, two years later their son Tom was born. In 1935 he emigrated to Vienna due to the political developments in Germany, where he married Erica Lillegg in 1938 after his first divorce .

André Breton , Paul Celan , Max Ernst and other representatives of the surrealist movement are among Jené's spiritual companions in Vienna and Paris. He was especially close friends with Celan. In post-war Vienna (1945–50) he promoted and promoted surrealism; there he organized the first surrealism exhibition together with Paul Celan and Arnulf Neuwirth . He also worked in Vienna as a picture editor for the magazine “Plan” and as co-editor of “Surrealist Publications”. With Albert Paris Gütersloh he became the Spiritus Rector of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism .

Jené lived in Paris from 1950 to 1965. There he had close contacts with the surrealists who established themselves as a group of artists around the Furstenberg gallery. During this time he organized a number of exhibitions, including in Saarland. From 1965 until his death he lived in Demeulaine, a medieval mill in La Chapelle St. André (Burgundy).

The Viennese publicist and journalist Otto Basil writes about Edgar Jené: “Jené's pictures surprise by the immediacy of the purely painterly conception. In his works there is wise restraint and a masterly economical color scheme, which swings out harmoniously in a subdued color scheme of mid-tones. But what gives the pictures such a magical attraction is their unreality, their strange unreality, which they approximate to certain mental states that can only be experienced in dreams or waking dreams. "

Honors, awards

1931/32 scholarship holder of the Villa Massimo ( German Academy Rome Villa Massimo )
1964 Saarland Art Prize .

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

1933–2013 regular exhibitions in the Elitzer Gallery (Saarbrücken)
1930/31 Heimatmuseum (Saarbrücken)
1931 Flechtheim Gallery (Berlin)
1948 Galérie Nina Dausset (Paris)
1951 Saarland Museum (Saarbrücken)
1954–1960 several exhibitions in the Galérie Furstenberg (Paris)
1964 Saarland Museum (Saarbrücken)
1965 Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern
1974 Saarland Museum (Saarbrücken)

Holdings

1928/29 Salon des Indépendants (Paris)
1931 November Group (Berlin)
1937 Hagenbund (Vienna)
1938 Modern art of 20th century [Ostracized German art] (Burlington Gallery, London)
1946 walkways of the Vienna Volkstheater
1947 Art Club (Vienna)
1952 Peinture surréaliste en Europe (Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrücken)
1955 Art 1955 ( Musée des beaux-arts , Rouen)
1961 Surréalisme et précurseurs (Palais Granvelle, Besançon)
1962 surrealism. Fantastic painting of the present (Künstlerhaus, Vienna)
1964 Le surréalisme (Charpentier Gallery, Paris)
1971 The spirit of surrealism (Baukunst-Galerie, Cologne)
1972 Surrealism 1922–1942 House of Art (Munich)
1985 Edgar Jené - Rosa and Heinrich Loew. Documents of a friendship ( Landesmuseum Mainz )

Works (selection)

Coco, 1928, 37.7 × 46.1 cm, private collection
The camp, 1945, oil on canvas, 61 × 74 cm, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken
Glove of the Nereïde, oil on wood, 46 × 38.5 cm, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken
Mondvogel, 1950, oil on wood, 73.2 × 59.5 cm, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken
The Thrown, 1952, oil on cardboard, 62 × 44 cm, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

Monika Bugs (ed.): Edgar Jené. A surrealist from Saarland . St. Ingbert 1994.
Monika Bugs: The cat in Edgar Jené's work . In: Winfried Nerdinger and Norbert Knopp (eds.): Festschrift JA Schmoll called Eisenwerth for his 90th birthday. 2005.
Paul Celan : Edgar Jené. The dream of the dream . Agathon-Verlag, Vienna 1948.
Friedhelm Häring : Edgar Jene. Drawings / designs . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1988, ISBN 978-3-88462-054-0
Friedhelm Häring: Edgar Jene. Watercolor / gouaches . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1989, ISBN 978-3-88462-059-5
Georg-Wilhelm Költzsch: Only the wonderful is beautiful. Life, works, encounters of the painter Edgar Jené . Saarbrücken 1984.
Oliver Wieters, The Dream of Silence. Paul Celan's early work (1948) on the surrealist painter Edgar Jené . Tübingen 1997.
Raphaël Neuville, “ Edgar Jené: peintre des apparitions ”, in Midi-Pyrénées Patrimoine , n ° 42, 2015, p. 111.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Jené, Edgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Jené, Erhard (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-French painter and graphic artist, surrealist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 4, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH	Saarbrücken - Malstatt
DATE OF DEATH	June 15, 1984
Place of death	La Chapelle St. André , France