Erich Geßmann

Erich Geßmann (born August 16, 1909 in Holzhausen near Göppingen ; † June 1, 2008 ) was a German sculptor and graphic artist .

Life

Geßmann attended the secondary school in Kirchheim unter Teck and completed an apprenticeship as a sculptor from 1924 to 1928, after which he studied at the Stuttgart Art Academy with Lörcher until 1933 . During the time of National Socialism in Germany, he was sentenced to six months in a concentration camp because of his political convictions for the KPD and SPD . He was later sentenced to two and a half years in prison and banned from exhibition. He was classified as unworthy of military service, drafted into a criminal division in Tunisia and was taken prisoner by the United States at the end of World War II .

After the war he took up residence in Heilbronn . From 1945 to 1947 he worked as a freelancer in Ludwigsburg , after which he worked as a handicraft teacher at an American agency until 1951, before working as a commercial artist for industry from 1951 until his retirement in 1974. Geßmann had been married since 1950. He died in 2008 at the age of 98.

plant

As a sculptor, Geßmann mainly worked with wood, but also used bronze and sandstone. Among other things, he furnished the Großer Deutschhof in Heilbronn with the sandstone reliefs at the entrance of the former knight's hostel. He was a member of the Heilbronn Artists' Association .

In an obituary, his artistic direction was described as follows: Wood is his favorite material, the human figure and its beauty is his theme ... He characterizes his representational, strongly reduced figures and couples and their relationships through the rhythm of the lines and the grain of the fir wood.

literature

• 30 years of the Heilbronn Artists' Association, summer exhibition 1979 , pp. 72/73.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heilbronn and the art of the 50s , Städtische Museen Heilbronn 1993
2. ↑ Andreas Sommer: Big misunderstood: Erich Geßmann has died . Stimme.de , June 6, 2008