Emil Rasmus Jensen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Emil Rasmus Jensen, Starnberg around 1960
Nymph and flute player , bronze, Deutsches Haus Flensburg (1930)

Emil Rasmus Jensen (born July 18, 1888 in Tondern , † December 22, 1967 in Starnberg ) was a German sculptor . He is considered a representative of modern sculpture in Schleswig-Holstein .

Bronze sculpture apparition , 1931
The Beethoven bust by Emil Rasmus Jensen, plaster of paris, appeared in full format on the title page 'Flensburger Illustrierte Nachrichten' from November 21, 1929

Life

Jensen's life had been severely affected by a rachitic illness from early childhood . His physical growth soon came to a halt, and it was not until he was about twenty that he was able to learn to walk. He was unable to attend regular school, so he had to be tutored by a tutor, but the family tried to make his life easier for him as much as possible.

Even in his youth he showed a pronounced artistic talent, which he developed through self-imposed tasks. Since his great talent was recognized, he was able to begin training in 1914 at the Flensburg School of Applied Arts (today: Vocational School for Wood Sculpture Flensburg ), where the sculptor Heinz Weddig mainly instructed him in the art of wood carving. In 1922 he switched to the arts and crafts school at Lerchenfeld in Hamburg . Here his teacher Johann Michael Bossard was decisive for Jensen.

From the end of the twenties, Jensen received commissions for various publicly displayed sculptures, for example for the Hamburg City Hall and the German House in Flensburg, for the opening of which in 1930 he created the allegorical bronze sculptures Nymph and Faun . A scholarship for a stay at the Villa Massimo in Rome was awarded to him in 1930 by the Prussian Academy of the Arts. In 1931 Jensen was able to move into a studio in the Ohlendorffhaus in Hamburg. In the same year his works were exhibited in Copenhagen 's Charlottenborg Palace.

When his studio was destroyed by bombing in 1943, Jensen also lost many of his works. He moved to his sister in Bayrischzell and later moved to Starnberg.

Jensen took up the stylistic trends in sculpture of his time and processed them into a multifaceted work that moves "formally between expressivity and elegance, in terms of content between monumentality and intimacy" (Chr. Rathke). A final assessment was initially considered difficult, as Jensen's most successful sculptures from around 1930 seemed largely lost. Fortunately, a number of the artist's key works have now been rediscovered on the art market.

On the work of the sculptor Emil Jensen

Despite his talent that was recognized early on, the sculptor Emil Rasmus Jensen, who was born in Tønder in 1888, was barely known beyond Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg. That was certainly also due to his physical impairment. But this much can be said: Emil Rasmus Jensen created an impressive work.

On the history of sculpture in Northern Germany

About the north German sculpture, which has been alive since the second half of the 20th century, it is often forgotten that this art stagnated for several centuries since its heyday during the late Gothic and the Dürer period. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods it barely got beyond a quality craftsmanship. Foreign artists had to be recruited for more important tasks, for example Dutch artists for the Gottorfer Hof in the 19th century. When, with Bertel Thorvaldsen, northern European sculpture regained importance around 1800, its effectiveness was largely limited to Rome. Only Copenhagen and some of the ministers of Schleswig-Holstein who were involved in the Danish government participated in it.

This situation changed little in the 19th century, not even after 1900, when the two younger talents from Schleswig-Holstein left the country in 1910: Adolf Brütt from Husum moved there after his studies in Berlin, Ernst Barlach moved from Wedel to Güstrow. The reasons for this can hardly be confirmed, but it can be assumed that the two sculptors did not find an environment that was favorable to their work at home. At almost the same time, Bernhard Hoetger , who later became important for the north of Germany, was appointed to Darmstadt. A vacuum remained for sculpture in northern Germany. Those responsible for the artistic training of the young generation after 1900 were therefore hardly able to win over competent teachers from Hamburg or Schleswig-Holstein; they had to look elsewhere if they wanted to make a regional and national impact. In 1907 the Swiss Johann Michael Bossard and the Viennese Richard Luksch were appointed to the Hamburg School of Applied Arts. Younger, future talents came from the classes of both sculptors, from the Luksch class, for example, Hans Martin Ruwoldt , from the Bossard class, Emil Jensen and Karl Hartung, among others . Since the 1920s and 1930s, artists coming from these classes shaped north German sculpture, especially in Hamburg and, determined by Hoetger , in Bremen.

The revival of North German sculpture

One of the few young sculptors who revived North German sculpture after the First World War was Emil Jensen, who was born in Tondern, Germany in 1888, and whose contribution to her should be rediscovered and appreciated. He had been trained in wood carving in his profession by the sculptor Heinz Weddig before his studies at the Flensburg arts and crafts college. In 1922, thanks to his proving talent, he was accepted into the Bossard class at the Hamburg Art School; It then made sense for him to move into a studio in Hamburg, which he owned until it was destroyed in the war in 1943.

His life's work is close to his somewhat older contemporaries: Georg Kolbe (born 1877), Karl Albiker (born 1878) and Richard Scheibe (born 1879), but some of his characters also determine dramatic and thematic motivations. The fact that Jensen was hardly known beyond Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, despite his talent that was recognized early on, was undoubtedly also determined by his physical fate; as a result of a serious rachitic illness, he remained so short that one can hardly see him on the studio photographs between his work.

These works - and also his nude models - appear huge next to him and as even more outstanding than the imperial dignitaries of Berlin next to Adolph Menzel or the soubrettes of Montmartre next to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . He was so disabled that he could not walk until he was twenty. How could he model life-size figures with bases only slightly higher than himself? It took a lot of courage and self-confidence to become a sculptor under such conditions, which are extremely stressful when dealing with larger sculptures.

Emil Jensen finds his form

During his student years at Bossard Jensen in Hamburg could have received stimulating ideas outside of school, above all through the exhibitions and acquisitions of the works of Moissey Kogan , Gustav Heinrich Wolff and Richard Haizmann at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe . But do these contemporaries seem to him - apart from Kogan? - hardly interested; his conception of sculpture was closer to that of Georg Kolbe , as can already be seen from his early works, such as the bronze figures of nymph and faun from 1930 for the German House in Flensburg, which opened that year.

Before his studies, Jensen was quite open to experiments, as his cubist-cut wooden statuette 'Berggeist' from 1917 reveals. During his studies - similar to Ruwoldt's early work - the influence of Art Nouveau was shown on a porcelain statuette. Other designs, mainly of robed figures , reveal an examination of Ernst Barlach's dramatic figures. However, Jensen apparently became aware - perhaps under Bossard's influence - that a form of sculpture following the classical was more appropriate to him. From today's point of view, the fact that he received recognition for this does not seem to be taken for granted, but the Prussian Academy of the Arts, which was free of directional guidelines, did not adhere to restrictive conditions when it encouraged Jensen to receive a grant for the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1930 .

The following year he was encouraged by an exhibition of his work in Copenhagen's Charlottenborg Palace , which may have taken place because Jensen came from Tønder, which is now part of Denmark.

Perhaps it was the conservative character of his sculpture that earned him the goodwill of the Hamburg Kunsthalle director Gustav Pauli , who ensured that in 1932 he was able to move into an adequate studio in the Ohlendorff Palais provided by the City of Hamburg . Here he was the neighbor of Ruwoldt , Nesch , Karl Kluth and other artists of the ' Hamburg Secession '. Jensen was part of the Hamburg art scene at this time, but kept in touch with Schleswig-Holstein through his family.

The destruction of the Hamburg studio

Emil Jensen's conservative style, which was already pronounced in the 1920s, did not offend after 1933; unlike some of his contemporaries, however, he evidently refrained from ingratiating on the “folkish” or “defensive” themes of the racist Nazi ideology, according to which, due to his small body size, he was incapable of depicting superman. his physical handicap protected him from military service.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the forty-year-old sculptor could tell himself that he had wrested a recognized achievement from his fate with measurable success; However, it remains difficult to get a sufficiently complete picture of his life's work, which was created before 1943, as the greater part of it was destroyed in the bombing of Hamburg. Fortunately, one or the other that came into private ownership could gradually be acquired by the family who preserve and secure his inheritance, but some more important work is also documented by photographs, so that his life's work can be assessed.

Between Rodin and the avant-garde

The judgment on his life's work can be based not only on a comparison with that of his avant-garde contemporaries (such as Brancusi , Zadkine , Laurens , Pevsner ), but primarily on his relationship to a tradition shaped by Auguste Rodin , but not only by its form. Rodin , which is often overlooked, used figural sculpture to interpret its rather distant themes; This emblematic-symbolist component of his art can be observed on the clasped hands called 'cathedral' or on some figures of his gates of hell.

The after-effects of this iconologically new understanding of sculpture can be observed not only in France, but across Europe, in Germany with Kolbe or Albiker , in England with Jacob Epstein , in Norway with Gustav Vigeland , in Sweden with Carl Milles .

The form of her bronzes and sculptures does not follow the example of Rodin , but their content and motifs take up his orientation towards symbolist motifs, if they do not even acquire a literary character - as in Barlach's work . Jensen's work remained largely free of such literary attitudes, although the subjects of his pictorial works were devotion to fate, mourning, and thoughtfulness, and consequently emotionally shaped motifs full of melancholy, pain, tragedy, despair - justified and understandable by his physical constriction. Characteristic for this are his figures' sadness', 'humility', 'fate,' lonely '.

But there are also alternatives to these darker sides of life, for example in the 'Norns' who challenge themselves to fate, in the figures and reliefs with mothers and children, carried by optimism towards life, or in several Beethoven paraphrases.

His figures always have something to convey to the viewer through their body language, gestures, posture, physiognomy; they never allow him a mere pleasure of form that is irrelevant to the content.

In this insistence on the meaning and motivation of sculpture, one feels the daily experience of the artist, the experience of his reduced living conditions, but also the survival of a tradition rooted not only through Rodin , but also in Art Nouveau and symbolism, which has some outstanding representatives at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts owned. Although, as the wood carvings of his early days show, he was a master of sculpture, Jensen later modeled his artistic ideas almost exclusively in clay and had them mostly cast in bronze. Despite his handicap, he was able to make this way of working the norm on a large scale.

Drawings with painterly embossing

Like many sculptors, Jensen was an excellent draftsman, whose sheets, as far as this can be said from the few acquaintances, often have a painterly character, free of drafts for sculptures, as his illustration shows; but some sheets of course also show figure ideas or figure drafts.

When, after losing his work in Bayrischzell, he was able to resume artistic activity in a limited space and without the necessary resources of a sculptor's studio, drawing offered him the first and only possibility.

Hamburg was Jensen's living space from 1922 to 1943, but as his bronzes for the German House in Flensburg show, he maintained a connection with Schleswig-Holstein during these years. The destruction of the studio ended this familiar relationship. Fortunately, he found a place to stay in Bayrischzell, in his sister's house, and was later able to move into a studio in Starnberg .

In the last years of his life he continued his work with ideas that were familiar to him, but also found a new subject with animal statuettes that had not been chosen so far. He was not satisfied with what he had already achieved, not even in terms of form, as his 'Pregnant Woman', created around 1965, shows with its abstract volumes and matt, glossy surface.

The fact that Emil Jensen reached the age of almost 80 despite his physical ailments should be thanks to his will to live, but also to his unbroken creative ability. When he started to model again in 1953 after the destruction of his studio and ten years without a new workplace in Starnberg, one of the first bronze statuettes was a group entitled 'Kindred Souls Help Each Other', a commitment to the help he gave found again and again and now again, a help that he experienced until the end of his life as a prerequisite for himself and others.

literature

  • Christian Rathke: Emil Jensen (1888–1967) sculptures. Exhibition from April 30th to June 16th 1989 Schleswig-Holstein State Museum Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig. Schleswig 1989.
  • Arne Jensen: high talent with short stature. The sculptor Emil Rasmus Jensen. An almost forgotten artist from Northern Schleswig. In: Grenzfriedenshefte, Vol. 64, 2017, pp. 71–84 ( online ).
  • Heinz Spielmann: On the work of the sculptor Emil Jensen. In: Schleswig-Holstein - The culture magazine for the north, vol. 01/2019, pp. 46–53.

Web links

Commons : Emil Rasmus Jensen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kunst @ SH: location, description, photos , accessed on February 20, 2018
  2. ↑ Flensburger Tageblatt: Emil Jensen from Flensburg - The Forgotten Artist (Catrin Haufschild), February 7, 2018 , accessed on February 20, 2018
  3. ^ [1] Sculpturest Emil Rasmus Jensen (1888–1967) sculptor
  4. ↑ Presentation of the Heinrich Sauermann Prize, Museumsberg Flensburg: About the sculptor Emil Jensen (1888–1967) (Arne Jensen), January 18, 1918
  5. ↑ Heinz Spielmann: On the work of the sculptor Emil Jensen, https://schleswig-holstein.sh/blog/2019/01/08/emil-jensen/#46
  6. ↑ Heinz Spielmann: On the work of the sculptor Emil Jensen, https://schleswig-holstein.sh/blog/2019/01/08/emil-jensen/#46
personal data
SURNAME Jensen, Emil Rasmus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Tondern
DATE OF DEATH 22nd December 1967
Place of death Starnberg