Elisabeth Voigt (painter)

Memorial plaque for Elisabeth Voigt on her former home in Leipzig- Schleußig , Brockhausstraße 22

Maria Agnes Elisabeth Voigt (born August 5, 1893 in Leipzig ; † November 1, 1977 there ) was a German painter , graphic artist and art teacher .

life and work

Voigt was born as the daughter of the chemist and manufacturer Karl Herrmann Voigt (1858–1929) and his wife Marie Luise (née Saupe) (1862–1935). From 1904 to 1909 she attended the Servier'sche secondary girls' school (private school) in Leipzig, from 1910 to 1911 the Morton Mc Michael School / William Penncharter School, Philadelphia, USA.

From 1911 to 1917 she studied at the Royal, later State Academy for graphic arts and book trade in Leipzig. After working as a laboratory assistant from 1919 to 1927, she attended the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin, formerly the Academic University of Fine Arts on Steinplatz, in the classes of Professors Ferdinand Spiegel (anatomy), Ernst Moritz Geyger and Erich Wolfsfeld . Then she was Carl Hofer's studio student for two years .

In 1927 she traveled to Tyrol and Rome for the first time, followed by a second trip to Italy in 1929, made possible by a Liebermann scholarship, which she was awarded for her oil painting Lamentation on the Cross in 1921.

From 1928 to 1933, Voigt master student at Kathe Kollwitz . From 1930 to 1933 she also worked as a set designer at the Old Theater in Leipzig. In 1934/35 she received a Rome scholarship from the Prussian Academy of the Arts at the Villa Massimo . From 1932 to 1942 Voigt was a member of the Association of Berlin Women Artists . From 1935 she worked as a teacher for graphic techniques at the drawing and painting school of this association.

Since 1935 she lived and worked freelance in Berlin.

From 1936 onwards she made regular summer stays in East Tyrol , in the communities of Kals and Matrei , where her most important sculptures were created.

In 1945, her studio in Berlin's Motzstrasse was bombed twice, and large parts of her previous work were lost. Elisabeth Voigt then decided to return to Leipzig.

In 1947 she was appointed as a lecturer at the State Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Industry Leipzig , today's HGB, and received a teaching position for the basic course, later also for the specialist course and, in parallel, a teaching position at the art education department of the Institute for Pedagogy at the University of Leipzig . In 1958 he retired . After that she worked freelance in Leipzig again.

Elisabeth Voigt burial site

Her life and work were shaped by Carl Hofer and Käthe Kollwitz as well as by their artistic work under two dictatorships. Despite her negative attitude towards their ideologies, she was represented, for example, with a nine-part woodcut series for Hermann Lön's novel The Wehrwolf at the National Socialist Great German Art Exhibition in 1937 in the Haus der Kunst in Munich , as well as at exhibitions in the GDR . In 1953 Voigt got involved in the formalism dispute in the GDR. As a result, she refused to take part in the 3rd German Art Exhibition in Dresden , turned down the GDR National Prize and considered giving up teaching. In 1958 she resigned from the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR . The cultural functionaries of the GDR could not do without "the excellent teacher" (Pohl). She was also protected by her artistic past and the relationships with Hofer and Kollwitz (Gillen). In 1974 she was rehabilitated with her appointment as an honorary member of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR.

Elisabeth Voigt's oeuvre consists mainly of woodcuts, lithographs and chalk drawings, as well as watercolors and 100 oil paintings. In the beginning she was mainly concerned with historical and literary motifs. From the 1960s she turned increasingly to biblical and religious topics.

Elisabeth Voigt spent the last years of her life in seclusion in Leipzig-Schleußig. After her death, she was buried in the south cemetery in Leipzig .

estate

Part of her written estate is in the Leipzig city archive. Her artistic legacy is kept in the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, which showed her work as part of the exhibition Art in Leipzig since 1949 from October 4, 2009 to January 10, 2010.

There are also numerous works of art in public and private collections at home and abroad, such as the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle (Saale) , the Lindenau Museum Altenburg , the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum Braunschweig and the Folkwang Museum Essen .

Exhibitions

23 solo exhibitions and 69 participations, including:

1998 Drawings and woodcuts , Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg
2013 Individuality - Humanism - Independence: Exhibition on the 120th birthday of Leipzig artist Elisabeth Voigt , August 21 to September 29, 2013, Bethanienkirche , Leipzig

Awards and honors

1921 Max Liebermann scholarship
1933 Albrecht Dürer Prize of the City of Nuremberg
1934 Rome Prize of the German Academy of the Arts with a stay in the Villa Massimo , Rome
1937 gold and silver medal at the international art exhibition at the world exhibition in Paris
1940 Graphics Prize of the City of Bern
1941 bronze medal of the German graphic exhibition
1943 Premio Cremona in the competition between Italian and German artists
1974 honorary membership in the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR
2010 Foundation of an art association Elisabeth Voigt eV in honor of the artist
2013 Memorial plaque of the city of Leipzig on the former home of the artist, Brockhausstraße 22

Student (selection)

literature

Helmut Scherf: Elisabeth Voigt. Portrait of an artist. Union Verlag, Berlin 1962.

Barbara Hentschel: The ambivalent work of Elisabeth Voigt: To some graphics based on literary models. In: Annual Books 1992. Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig, ISBN 3-86060-013-3 .
Sigrid Ihle, Karl-Heinz Mehnert: Drawings and watercolors by artists of the German Democratic Republic. Catalogs of the Graphic Collection, Volume 4, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig 1975, p. 104.
Dieter Gleisberg: Voigt, Elisabeth . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
Ute Tartz: Elisabeth Voigt. on the website of Women Personalities in Leipzig of the University of Leipzig

Web links

Voigt, Elisabeth. In: Website of the city of Leipzig. Retrieved February 23, 2020 . (with age portrait)
Literature by and about Elisabeth Voigt in the catalog of the German National Library
Art Association Elisabeth Voigt eV

Individual evidence

↑ Already in the Third Reich the Voigt family had to experience the imprisonment of their sister due to their basic humanistic attitude against anti-Semitism and 1942 summons for high treason (...) . Quote: Exhibition text Individuality - Humanism - Independence: Exhibition for the 120th birthday of the Leipzig artist Elisabeth Voigt. August 21 to September 29, 2013, Bethanienkirche , Leipzig.
↑ Harald Behrendt: Werner Tübke's panorama picture in Bad Frankenhausen: between state prestige project and artistic self-commission. Schleswig-Holstein writings on art history, Verlag Ludwig, 2006, ISBN 3-937719-21-0 , p. 280.

personal data
SURNAME	Voigt, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Voigt, Maria Agnes Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH	August 5, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH	Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH	November 1, 1977
Place of death	Leipzig

[1] Already in the Third Reich the Voigt family had to experience the imprisonment of their sister due to their basic humanistic attitude against anti-Semitism and 1942 summons for high treason (...) . Quote: Exhibition text Individuality - Humanism - Independence: Exhibition for the 120th birthday of the Leipzig artist Elisabeth Voigt. August 21 to September 29, 2013, Bethanienkirche , Leipzig.

[2] Harald Behrendt: Werner Tübke's panorama picture in Bad Frankenhausen: between state prestige project and artistic self-commission. Schleswig-Holstein writings on art history, Verlag Ludwig, 2006, ISBN 3-937719-21-0 , p. 280.