Erich Schönfeld

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Erich Schönfeld

Erich Schönfeld (born February 8, 1904 in Berlin , † February 13, 1983 in Warsingsfehn ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

youth

Erich Schönfeld was born as the seventh child of the master confectioner and Stollwerck chocolate laboratory assistant Wilhelm Schönfeld and his wife Minna (née Bergmann) in Berlin-Wedding. Since 1914 the family lived on Mohrenstrasse in the center of Berlin.

At the age of 15, Erich Schönfeld was accepted into the "school atelier for drawing and painting, preparatory institution for higher art schools". Since an arts and crafts activity was a prerequisite for admission to art studies, he learned porcelain painting at the age of 16 .

From studies to UFA

At the age of 17 he passed the entrance exam at the educational establishment of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, which, merged with the University of Fine Arts in 1924, was now known as the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts. Erich Schönfeld became a pupil of Emil Orlik in 1922 and took courses in drawing and painting with Ernst Böhm , gravure and stone printing with Carl Michel , life drawing with Koch and Henseler , lettering and writing with Heuer. Because of his achievements, Erich Schönfeld received a state scholarship and won several prizes in competitions. At the end of his art studies in 1927, his main talent in the field of graphics was attested. In 1927 he became an employee in their animation studio of the UFA film company. In 1930 he opened an animation studio and worked for various film companies, such as Tobis-Tonbild-Syndikat and Terra Film. As a graphic artist, he created the font graphics for the opening credits for feature films such as “ Der Kurier des Zaren ” and “ Der Draufgänger ” and, above all, designed animated film drawings.

Schönfeld produced advertisements for the Berlin department store Wertheim and the North German Lloyd, stage sets for the theater (including for Danton's death). In 1936 Schönfeld worked for a few months at Schloss Wiesenburg (Hoher Fläming Nature Park), where he portrayed Princess Reuss XXVI, Count von Plauen and his wife, among others.

War and post-war turbulence

Drafted into the army as a cartographer, Schönfeld was stationed near Saint-Nazaire on the French Atlantic coast from 1940 and in the south of the Netherlands from 1942 to 1945, where he was married to a Dutch nurse from Groningen, Klaziena Hoeksema. Released from the Augsburg military hospital at the end of the war, Schönfeld made his way to Leer in East Frisia, where his wife and their one-year-old twins followed in 1946.

In the first years after the war, Erich Schönfeld founded a political-intellectual group in Leer together with Westermann, the pianist and writer Bruno Johannes Loetz and Ms. Kochan, which offered lectures and courses on art, literature and general education free of charge. From this the 'Volksbildungswerk' developed, from which later the adult education center emerged, where he worked as a lecturer. From 1977 to 1980 he headed the printing technology workshop he initiated there. Schönfeld was a member of the Association of Visual Artists East Friesland.

plant

Artistically broad spectrum

Erich Schönfeld used a variety of painting, graphic and printing techniques through to sculptural design. His field of activity ranged from stage design to animated films, from advertising posters to wall paintings, from portraits to landscapes, vedutas and seascapes, from porcelain painting, carving and carpentry to calligraphic leaves. His works from the time between the two world wars are only rudimentary; Much of the post-war work is also not archived.

Early Berlin influences

At the beginning of the 20th century, Erich Schönfeld dealt with modern trends in the visual arts, among other things at art exhibitions, especially the Berlin Secession. According to his own testimony, he was impressed by the early Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Slevogt, Adolph von Menzel and especially Matthias Grünewald. In terms of modernist movements, he criticized their overly constructivist compositions and also their occasional craftsmanship. Erich Schönfeld experienced Max Liebermann during his studies in Berlin and was occasionally able to provide technical assistance. He initially took up late impressionist impulses from his work. Heinrich Zille and Käthe Kollwitz also influenced this path with their socially critical works. Emil Orlik became Schönfeld's personal and artistic father. It was less his Japonism and affinity for Art Nouveau than his portraits that shaped him.

Designed naturalism

No clearly delimited stylistic epochs in Schönfeld's work can be identified, but motivic emphases and technical differentiations can be made. Between 1945 and 1983 Schönfeld created a large number of landscapes with windmills at the center; often carried out in series and in different techniques. His last, albeit unfinished, work, an etching from February 1983, was designed by a gallery Dutchman. In Holland and East Frisia, the artist was surrounded by these striking buildings, which lost their economic importance in the post-war period. Lübbert R. Haneborger called this "painting as a memory for historical inventory".

Staged reality

A detailed reproduction of reality reveals the artist's staging interventions. Such creative freedom can often only be proven if photographic comparisons or on-site checks are possible. Schönfeld's serial way of working makes it easier (by comparing the works with the creatively modified identical motif) to understand how he has staged the reality found in a way that suits his respective compositional ideas. The numerous tree and forest motifs are suitable for this, some of which are executed as naturalistic reproductions, and others are graphic and expressionistically abstracted mood images. Erich Schönfeld copied and interpreted Rembrandt, Rubens, Pieter Janssens Elinga, Ruisdael, Murillo, Cornelisz and Thoma.

literature

  • The artist and his landscape. Ed. Von der Ostfriesische Landschaft / KBZ, Aurich 1980, p. 78 (catalog with illustrations and curriculum vitae)
  • Heiko Jörn: On the death of the painter and graphic artist Erich Schönfeld. In: Leer Aktuell, March 1983
  • Heiko Jörn, opening lecture, memorial exhibition for Erich Schönfeld, September 28, 1985, Moormerland Town Hall, erich-schoenfeld.npage.de
  • Heiko Jörn: Catalog of the "Leeraner Kunstmeile 1988". Leer 1988, p. 16
  • Heiko Jörn: Art by the miles. In: Ostfriesland Journal, 1988, No. 3, p. 58 (illustration of the lithograph "Mühle bei Mondschein")
  • Heiko Jörn: Ostfriesland graphics. Edited by the East Frisian Landscape / RPZ, Aurich 1992, p. 31 f. (Catalog of the school exhibition)
  • East Frisian art calendar. Published by von der Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich, 1984, 1987, 1990, 1992.
  • Lübbert R. Haneborger, Liebermanns Erbe, p. 110, Ostfriesland Magazin 2/2014, Soltau-Kurier Norden
  • Rosina Zierleyn [Schönfeld daughter], letter to the editor "Orlik shaped students sustainably" in the Nordwest-Zeitung from May 24, 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ empty current, 02/1979
  2. ↑ leer aktuell, 02/1979 and Ostfriesen-Zeitung, February 26, 1977
  3. ↑ empty current, 02/1979
  4. ↑ Nordwest-Zeitung of May 24, 2014
  5. ↑ Lübbert R. Haneborger, lecture at the opening of the memorial exhibition for the 110th birthday of Erich Schonfeld at City Hall Moormerland on 9 February 2014;
  6. ^ Similar in: Ostfreesland - Calendar for Ostfriesland 2015, Verlag Soltau-Kurier Norden: Lübbert R. Haneborger, Erich Schönfeld and the legacy of Liebermann, p. 115
personal data
SURNAME Schönfeld, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1983
Place of death Warsingsfehn