Elisabeth Hoffmann (artist)

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Elisabeth Hoffmann (born November 26, 1914 in Börnig , Sodingen , † August 31, 1973 in Herne ) was a German painter and sculptor . She was best known for her sculpture "The Unknown Football Spectator" in Herne-Sodingen.

Life

Childhood and youth

Elisabeth Hoffmann: The Unknown Football Spectator (sculpture, green sandstone, 1958)

Elisabeth Hoffmann was born as the daughter of the farmers Wilhelm Hoffmann (1854 - 1936) and Paula Hoffmann, b. Pantring, born in Börnig (today Herne-Sodingen ). She had two siblings, Heinrich and Paula. Hof Hoffmann, located in Börniger Vellwigstrasse 49a, was demolished in 1973. It was one of the oldest and largest farms in Börnig and had been there since 1230. Elisabeth Hoffmann's father Wilhelm Hoffmann wrote novels and dramas, her brother Heinrich was a sculptor, as was his daughter.

University studies and early adulthood

Elisabeth Hoffmann was initially undecided whether she should study fine arts or music. Finally she decided to study fine arts, which she completed in Münster , Berlin and Vienna , where she a. a. Hans Sedlmayr , professor of art history , heard. In 1939/40, as a sister at the Red Cross , she looked after soldiers and travelers in the medical station at the train station in Münster. The tasks of the Red Cross included transporting the wounded and sick from hospital trains to and from the hospital and providing them with food and accommodation until they could continue their journey. For a while she stayed in the monastic school of the Franciscan Sisters in Lüdinghausen .

Work as an artist in Herne-Börnig

In 1951 she returned to her parents' farm in Herne-Börnig, where she set up a studio. There she initially worked on a major order from the city of Herne for 231 memorial stones for the bomb victims' honorary department of the Second World War on the southern cemetery in Herne. The Herne sculptor Wilhelm Hahn (1908 to 1961), who u. a. created the memorial for the Russian soldiers on the Bochum main cemetery , involved with the production of half of the memorial crosses. In the following years she also received public contracts for the production of sculptures. For the Corpus Christi parades in Sodingen , she made the figure “ The Incredible Thomas ” in 1952 and a sculpture of a nativity scene (Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus) in 1953 . In 1958 she made the block sculpture "The Unknown Football Spectator" for the new building of the Protestant elementary school in Sodingen, today's Mont-Cenis-Gesamtschule .

Artistic work

Hoffmann created paintings, as well as figurative reliefs and sculptures , which often had natural, animal, children's and religious motifs. Her figures are strict and economical in their pictorial means, but full of expressiveness and inner movement. Few, but speaking, gestures give the characters life. In the years 1949 to 1959 she mainly created sculptures, later she devoted herself increasingly to painting . While her works from the early 1940s show naturalistic motifs, Hoffmann also experimented with modern styles in the 50s and 60s, in particular with Expressionism and Cubism . One of the formative influences was the artist Gabriele Münter , with whom she maintained contact during her multiple stays in Murnau am Staffelsee . The artist group Der Blaue Reiter also shaped her work.

In 1959 she began making sculptures out of concrete . "Concrete is the formative material of our time," she said in 1959 about the choice of this material. She increasingly included “empty space” in her sculptures, for example in the sculptures “ Orpheus ” and “ Heron ”, which do not consist of a compact whole, but in which the figures consist of individual arcs and lines and that of them enclosed space. This empty space does not seem dead, but forms an organic part of the whole. In painting, she made a change from the figurative, detailed representation, which was at the expense of color, to a large-scale composition in which color is the dominant element, only in the late 1950s. The painting “Bridge without End” from the beginning of 1959 shows harmoniously coordinated, bright colors.

Elisabeth Hoffmann: The heron, sculpture concrete 1959

Destruction of her sculpture "Orpheus"

The fact that her relationship with her neighbors in Börnig was not consistently harmonious is shown by several attacks, which at the time also received attention in the local press. A year after she returned to the farm in 1952, her dog was willfully showered with paint and part of its tail was trimmed. "Here," wrote the Herner Stadtanzeiger at the time, "- even if you include all private resentment and bad misunderstanding - a piece of barbarism that tries to hit the artist by hitting his dearest, the animal." The multiple destruction of the sculpture "Orpheus" that stood in the garden of her property shows that the artist, who lives alone and who likes to smoke, had enemies in the village of Börnig. After an initial destruction in which the sculpture was painted, the sculpture was knocked over or pushed into the bushes several times. When it was finally destroyed, it was torn down again and worked with hard objects. The arm and the framework of the wire sculpture on which the mortar was modeled broke. The sculpture was intended for the exhibition of the Herner literary association " Das Boot ", which was supposed to take place in September 1960 as part of an authors' meeting. Since there were no plans for the sculpture and it was created by hand, it could not be reworked or cast in bronze. The artist filed a complaint.

Late work

In the 1960s, Elisabeth Hoffmann created stylized images of people and animals, architectural studies in color with strict lines, wood carvings in oak, reliefs from the mining sector, sculptures, figurative and highly abstracted. The artist's attitude towards contemporary art of the 1960s remained aloof.

Although she was critical of the situation for artists in her hometown of Herne, she stayed on her farm until her death in 1973. She was unmarried all of her life and had no children. After her death, she was forgotten. It was not until 2014 that she was rediscovered as the creator of the sculpture "The Unknown Football Viewer" . A first exhibition of a few paintings and sculptures took place in 2018 as part of the exhibition “'Traces' - Herne Artists of the Years 1893–1945” in the Municipal Gallery in the Herne-Strünkede Palace Park . Almost all of the 50 or so works by Hoffmann known today are privately owned by the family.

Sculpture "The Unknown Football Spectator" (monument)

In 1951, it was the first to produce 115 memorial stones for Herne bomb victims of World War II on behalf of the city of Herne. These memorial stones are now on the south cemetery in Herne . Very probably also on behalf of the city of Herne for the new school building of the Evangelical Primary School Sodingen (1955/56) she made the sculpture “The unknown football spectator” at the end of the 1950s, which she also called “all-round sculpture”. It depicts three children who are watching a soccer game. The sculpture is the only sculpture in the world that depicts football spectators. The artist dedicated it to the spectators of SV Sodingen , a football club whose members were miners from the Mont-Cenis colliery in Sodingen . It is considered to be one of the last miners' football clubs in the Ruhr area. The sculpture is in the schoolyard of the Mont Cenis Comprehensive School . Due to the special importance of the sculpture, it was added to the list of monuments of the city of Herne on March 23, 2018 . In the justification it is emphasized that the work of art is important for the city of Herne , as it reminds of the great football history of the city. 1958 there was the SV Sodingen and Westfalia Herne two originally from Herne successful football clubs that were widely celebrated and admired, in part because they at that time with the German football championship played and the highest at the time league, the Oberliga West , represented were.

With the general theme of "sport", the work of art refers to the enthusiasm for sport and the high level of recognition of sport in Herne and the Federal Republic of Germany . In this context, the work seems to have been commissioned. There are artistic reasons for preservation and use.

There are also scientific reasons for its preservation and use in terms of regional history . Up to the rediscovery of the sculpture in 2014 forgotten artist Elisabeth Hoffmann is 2014-2017 by the initiative and work of a project group of the Mont-Cenis Comprehensive School, led by Céline Spieker and the local historian Gerd E. Schug, in the opinion of the Regional Council to Right back in the public eye. In addition to the listed monument value and artistic value of her sculpture, the artist's biography also speaks for the preservation of the “goal scream”, because Elisabeth Hoffmann's work and life fits into the large group of artists who came from the Ruhr area in the 1950s and 1960s originating in the Ruhr area and enriched the public space. This was possible as long as the municipalities in particular felt obliged to comply with the rule inherited from the Weimar Republic to invest one percent of the costs for public buildings in art or even to employ artists as teachers in schools. The work is therefore also to be preserved as a testimony to an unexpectedly artistic era in the Ruhr area.

Elisabeth Hoffmann child's head plaster sculpture

Works

  • Head (sculpture)
  • Profile of a man (plaster relief, 1940)
  • Seven Swabians (plastic, early work)
  • Sheaves of corn (painting, 1946)
  • Dancing Yogis (painting, 1949)
  • 115 memorial stones for bomb victims of World War II (sculptures, 1951, Herne Südfriedhof)
  • Unbeliever Thomas (large sculpture, before 1952)
  • St. Georg (plaster sculpture 1953)
  • Man with fur hat and pipe (painting)
  • The refugee (plastic, wood, before 1952)
  • Nativity group (relief, before 1952)
  • Children's group (plastic)
  • Crucifix (before 1952)
  • Pair (plastic)
  • Girl's head with pigtails (plaster plastic)
  • Lion head (plastic on fountain)
  • Madonna (sculpture, wood, before 1952, approx. 55 × 10 × 8 cm)
  • The Red House (painting, oil, 1956)
  • The unknown football spectator (large sculpture, green sandstone, 1958, schoolyard of the Mont-Cenis comprehensive school Herne)
  • Heron (plastic made of concrete, courtyard Herne-Börnig, 1959)
  • The Hoffmannhof (watercolor, undated)
  • Orpheus (concrete sculpture, courtyard Herne-Börnig, 1959, destroyed)
  • Tomb (sculpture, 1959)
  • Children's head (base plate, wood, clay, no year, approx. 25 × 15 × 15 cm)
  • Bridge without end (painting, oil 1959)
  • White Cow (painting, oil 1959)
  • House (painting, oil 1958)
  • Circles and Squares (painting, oil 1958)
  • Circles and shapes (painting, oil no year)
  • Dancer (painting 1959)
  • Deer (painting c. 1959)
  • Painter with brush and model (painting)
  • Four people with headgear and two horse outlines (painting)
  • View of the sun between skyscrapers (painting, 1960)
  • The Hoffmann farm in Börnig (watercolor, 1960)
  • Two people between buildings in the mountains (painting)
  • Three people between skyscrapers (painting)
  • Sailboat (painting, oil, 1961, approx. 80 × 50 cm)
  • Three boats (painting, oil 1962)
  • Brother (painting, oil, undated, approx. 50 × 30 cm)
  • Still life with bell and spatula (painting)
  • Black Madonna and Child (painting)
  • Sketch woman on a black background (painting)
  • Three Willows (painting)
  • Trees in front of wall (painting)
  • Miner (painting)
  • Four people in the living room (painting)
  • Girl portrait (painting)
  • Relief (wood, 1968, HxWxD approx. 90 × 20 × 8 cm)
  • Mother with child (wood relief)

literature

Gerd E. Schug: The artist / sculptor / painter Elisabeth Hoffmann. Herne 2017, unpublished article.

Movie

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Hoffmann  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Historical Association Herne / Wanne-Eickel: "The Hoffmann family of artists", https://wiki.hv-her-wan.de/index.php?title=Hof_Hoffmann
  2. ↑ a b c The unbelieving Thomas and the dancing yogis. A visit to the sculptor Elisabeth Hoffmann in Sodingen. In: Herner Stadtanzeiger. July 2, 1952 (Herne City Archives)
  3. ↑ https://www.drk-muenster.de/wer-wir-sind/100/festschrift.pdf?m=1392282007
  4. ↑ http://www.st-antonius-gymnasium.de/index.php/schule/daten-ffekten-geschichte
  5. ↑ https://www.bochum.de/C125708500379A31/vwContentByKey/W27DABW8148BOLDDE
  6. ↑ a b Herner artist creates sculptures out of concrete. In: Ruhr news. Herne No. 222 from September 25, 1959 (Herne City Archives)
  7. ↑ the boat. Sheets for contemporary poetry. Herne
  8. ↑ Iconoclasts at night in Börnig: plastic overturned and smashed. Sculptor Elisabeth Hoffmann found sculpture smashed in the garden. In: WAZ. August 1960 (Stadtarchiv-Herne)
  9. ↑ Sculptor loves old farmsteads. Family tradition obliges. Elisabeth Hoffmann wants to remain loyal to her hometown. In: Herner Rundschau. 20./21. July 1968 (City Archives Herne)
  10. ↑ https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/world-first-football-statue-database-1.364756
  11. ↑ http://www.mont-cenis-habenschule.de
  12. ↑ Heinz Munck (Monument Authority City of Herne ): Report template 2018/0043, TOP1.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / herne.ratsportal.net   January 18, 2018;
personal data
SURNAME Hoffmann, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Börnig
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1973
Place of death Herne