Else Weber

Else Weber (born March 31, 1893 in Hamburg ; † February 25, 1994 there ) was a painter of expressive realism in the tradition of avant-garde art emanating from France .

Life

Born as Else Rouwolf, she grew up in a musically active, middle-class family. The father Richard Rouwolf was a senior teacher , the mother Margarethe, née Briege, ran the household and was a member of the choir. After finishing school, she completed an apprenticeship as a primary school teacher, but did not practice this profession for long because in 1914 she married the teacher Hans Ulrich Weber. Married women were forbidden to work as teachers in the German Empire .

In 1916 she became the mother of a girl. She designed furniture for domestic use. Since childhood, she made sketches mainly while traveling and continued this habit as an adult. At the age of 30 she painted her first picture, a self-portrait in pastel chalk. At dinner she met the renowned portrait painter Rudolf Zeller , who eventually accepted her as a student in his studio.

artistic education

From 1923 to 1928 Weber completed training in Zeller's studio. This mainly consisted of corrections and instruction in the formal image structure. Since coloring was not part of Zeller's lessons, Weber tried to be accepted into Karl Hofer's studio in Berlin . Hofer, then a celebrated painter star, turned her down on the grounds that he was no longer accepting students and that he did not know what else she wanted to learn from him. Weber then decided to continue his education on his own using textbooks, visits to exhibitions and exhibition catalogs.

The artist first took part in an exhibition in 1926 with the GEDOK (Association of German and Austrian Artists' Associations) founded by Ida Dehmel in Hamburg . In the artists' association she made contact with the painter of the Hamburg Secession Gretchen Wohlwill and the pianist Lucy Brätsch-Wilkens. In the apartment of Lucy and the art patron and jeweler, Carl MH Wilkens, numerous artist meetings took place in the 1920s and early 1930s with the participation of the Hamburg avant-garde scene.

Else Weber professionalized herself through regular work and discussions with other artists and made painting her profession. She was supported in this by her husband and daughter. Traveling by cargo ship for study purposes was not a part of family life either, but was tolerated with the help of Else Weber's friend Grete Bünz, who looked after the daughter.

In 1929 the artist went to Paris for a year and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière there . There she worked from models, sketched and regularly visited the galleries of the Louvre . At the end of the year she went to Antibes . After her return to Hamburg she was offered several exhibitions. The most famous was the participation in the 10th exhibition of the Hamburg Secession, which defined itself as an elite association. The artist's solo exhibition in the Maria Kunde art salon in the "Bieberhaus" near Hamburg Central Station, which still exists today, was particularly celebrated by the press.

During this time friendships developed with the Secession painters Erich Hartmann and Arnold Fiedler , of whom Weber was to paint a large, colorful portrait in later years.

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Portraits

Else Weber's artistic beginnings were in the portrait subject, she learned the craft from the portrait painter Rudolf Zeller. There are numerous paintings of models from this period, especially of Zeller's permanent model, “Fräulein Heitmüller”, but she also painted her teacher and classmates. Outside of the teaching studio, her daughter Sigrid was the preferred model. In addition, she portrayed acquaintances, friends and their children.

The large-format, color-intensive portrait of her painting colleague and friend Gretchen Wohlwill was created in 1962, the year she died. In the same year she painted the large portrait of her husband Hans Ulrich Weber. The portraits of Lisa Fiedler and her husband, the painter Arnold Fiedler , were created in 1974 and 1975 .

to travel

The travel sketches and the resulting paintings represent an essential factor in Weber's oeuvre. Together with her husband, she traveled to Finland and Leningrad. She made numerous trips on her own on inexpensive cargo ships, for example to Greece and Turkey . The island of Sylt and Denmark were closer destinations .

Nazi dictatorship and war

After the National Socialists came to power , GEDOK came under political and physical pressure. The office on Jungfernstieg was destroyed by violent SA thugs, the chairwoman and founder Ida Dehmel was forced to resign because she was Jewish, and the artists' association was finally dissolved on April 20, 1933. The Hamburg Secession dissolved after political and, in turn, physical attacks against members themselves. His first artist colleagues emigrated, including Arnold Fiedler at the end of the 1930s.

Many of those who stayed had to reckon with harassment such as studio searches, exhibition bans and disregard. Despite her modern painting style, which was influenced by French avant-garde art, Else Weber was spared such hostility. She kept a low profile and did not bother about exhibitions. She was financially secure through her husband's job. She didn't want to perceive the unpleasant realities.

During the war years she did not let herself be stopped from traveling. She spent a few weeks in Tyrol in the summers of 1941 and 1942 . In 1944 she traveled again to Tyrol, where she was supposed to stay longer than planned, because in the last months of the war nobody was allowed to leave their respective whereabouts.

Federal Republic of Germany

After the end of the Second World War , a friendship developed with the Hamburg painter Gabriele Schweitzer-Daube , in 1954 and 1956 the two traveled together to the island of Elba and Paris. Traveling was also the artist's main source of inspiration. Alone and with her husband, she traveled to her sister in Würzburg , the North Sea islands, Holland , Denmark and Ticino . The artist was invited again to the exhibitions of the newly founded GEDOK and the Hamburg Artists' Union as well as other group exhibitions.

Artistically she dealt with the meanwhile classic modern artists such as Georges Braque and Henri Matisse , Vincent van Gogh , Edvard Munch and the then less known Paula Modersohn-Becker , but also with the British Ben Nicholson . However, the old masters were also the target of their studies.

At the age of almost 90 Else Weber decided to give up traveling and also gave up painting. At the age of 100, on February 25, 1994, she died in Hamburg. Else Weber was a member of the Hamburg Art Association .

Exhibitions (selection)

Participation in exhibitions

• 1926 - Founding exhibition of GEDOK , Hamburg
• 1931 - 10th exhibition of the Hamburg Secession , Kunstverein in Hamburg
• 1931 - Women painted by women, GEDOK exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg
• 1937 - Spring exhibition of Hamburg artists. Painting, graphics, sculpture, art association in Hamburg
• 1938 - Hamburg artist, art association in Hamburg
• 1948 - Visual artists in the 'German Lyceum Club', local group Hamburg, Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg
• 1956 - Spring exhibition of the Association of Female Artists, Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg
• 1957 - Painting of women, GEDOK exhibition, Thalia Theater, Hamburg
• 1964 - GEDOK, artists of the federal territory, Kunsthaus Hamburg
• 1970 - Fifty Years of Hamburgische Künstlerschaft eV, Kunsthaus Hamburg
• 1986 - back light. 60 years of GEDOK, Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin
• 1990 - Hamburg artists 1900 to 1930, Galerie Herold, Hamburg
• 2005 - exhibition premiere. The forum for the estates of artists presents works by eleven artists, Künstlerhaus Sootbörn , Hamburg

Solo exhibitions

• 1984 - On the 90th birthday of Else Weber, GEDOK-Galerie, Hamburg
• 2006 - Else Weber (1893-1994). A Hamburg painter. Retrospective, forum for the estates of artists eV, Künstlerhaus Sootbörn, Hamburg
• 2009 - Else Weber: Life of an Artist. Altonaer Museum , February 17 to May 10, 2009

Literature (selection)

• Else Weber (1893–1994), Ed. Martha Pulvermacher Foundation Hamburg and Forum for Estates of Artists eV, Hamburg, Verlag Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 2006. ISBN 3-922660-97-5
• Ingrid von der Dollen: Painters in the 20th Century. Visual art of the "lost generation" . Munich 2000, p. 370
• Volker Detlef Heydorn: Painter in Hamburg . Volume 3, Hamburg 1974, ill.p. 80
• Elke Lauterbach-Philip: The GEDOK (Association of Artists and Art Sponsors) - Your story with special consideration of the fine and applied arts . Munich 2003 (Diss.)
• The new Rump, lexicon of visual artists in Hamburg, Altona and the surrounding area . revised new edition, ed. by Kay Rump, edited by Maike Bruhns, Hamburg 2005

Other sources

• Catalog for the exhibition Art in the Ostracism. The Emmi Ruben donation 1948 , Hamburger Kunsthalle 1997, p. 39

Web links

• Literature by and about Else Weber in the catalog of the German National Library
• Else Weber on artnet