Erika John

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Erika John (born January 1, 1943 in Jena ; † between March 1, 2007 and January 25, 2008 there ) was a German painter , graphic artist and sculptor .

Childhood and youth

Erika John was born in 1943 into a working-class family in Jena that was close to the communist resistance against National Socialism. Her grandfather was Josef Klose, a member of the Thuringian resistance group " Magnus Poser ". Erika's parents were the decorator painter Willy John and Paula Klose, who were still married to each other at the time Erika's birth. In 1947, the divorced Paula John gave her four-year-old daughter to the socialist GDR home system in order to devote herself exclusively to her SED party career. According to her own statements, Erika stayed in eight homes until she was of legal age. She suffered from the cold of childhood at home - "Fear was the keynote of my life," said Erika John later.

Life

From 1961 to 1963 Erika John attended the Workers 'and Farmers' Faculty for Fine Arts in Dresden at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts . From 1963 she completed an apprenticeship as a stonemason in Berlin and then studied painting and graphics at the Dresden University of Fine Arts from 1965 to 1970. After completing her studies, she worked briefly in the urban development office in Jena, and from 1970 she worked as a freelance artist. She taught from 1973 to 1982 at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and from 1983 to 1987 had a teaching position at the University of Industrial Design in Halle, Burg Giebichenstein .

In Jena, Erika John became a member of the Association of Visual Artists , worked as an art course director and exhibition maker and thus gained a certain reputation - as well as because of her visual art work.

Until the 1990s, Erika John was considered to be a beacon of hope for the visual arts in Thuringia . She had earned a reputation beyond Jena and the region as a sensitive draftsman with her own handwriting, as a sought-after exhibition designer and as a course instructor and object designer valued by children and adults. In addition, as the estate shows, she was an adventurous, original photographer.

After her mother's death in 1994, Erika John learned from documents the full extent of the mother's betrayal. She applied to see her Stasi files, which she was granted: “Everything was, is even worse than expected.” Despite her self-established good roots in Buddhism , Erika John no longer recovered from the knowledge that she hated home stays from viewpoint should serve the mother of her upbringing to become a 'socialist man'. She plunged into an identity crisis and responded with withdrawal and refusal.

After numerous exhibitions and participation in exhibitions, Erika John withdrew further and further from the mid-1990s. She no longer exhibited her work, avoided encounters, let contacts wither and lived like a hermit in a prefabricated high-rise in Neulobeda , Jena's satellite town from the GDR era.

Suicide 2007

After deeply traumatizing insights from within the family (her mother had her registered as a future cadre in the Stasi card index in Erfurt as a ten-year-old in 1953 - at the same time as her own commitment as an informant for the GDR state security - as she learned in the 1990s), one of the broken ones Short-term love affair, a first sudden hearing loss (1983) and a household accident (1990) that permanently robbed her of the fine functions of the left working hand and permanently restricted her artistic work, Erika John increasingly lost confidence and joie de vivre. The first suicide attempt was made in 1996.

Probably in 2007 Erika John committed suicide . It may have been an accounting suicide , but obviously - as the following quote seems to prove - a conscious, long-planned and thoroughly prepared decision by the artist.

“Sixty-four years of living in four German countries is enough. (...) I have not applied for any state aid, no pension, am no longer insured and have not renewed my identity card. Savings deposits are available to settle the costs still to be incurred. Thus the educational, administrative and bullying object E. John says goodbye . "

- Erika John in the last entry in her notes, undated

On February 11, 2008 Erika John was born in her high-rise apartment in Jena-Lobeda, Stauffenbergstr. 16, found dead when the public order office opened an apartment. The exact date of death could no longer be determined; According to official statements, it is "between March 1, 2007 and January 25, 2008". There is unofficial evidence that the date of death may be around June 23, 2007 (the anniversary of her mother's death).

The officially ordered burial took place on February 13, 2008. On March 27, 2008, the Jena daily press published an obituary notice initiated by the Jena Art Association. The four heirs - ABM colleagues of Erika John from the early 1990s - transferred the entire artistic estate of the city of Jena ( Jena City Museum and City Archives) on June 24, 2013 .

When viewing the entire work, the multifaceted nature of the more than 1,000 works became apparent: numerous landscape studies are just as much a focus as the human figure as a motif. In portraits, figure studies and groups of people, the artist captures the innermost on the surface and tries to make the spiritual visible. John created a work that is characterized by a high level of sensitivity for what is seen and a precise perception of nuances. She experimented with techniques, materials and styles - complemented by a few oil paintings that focus on people and their faces.

Exhibitions

  • 1977: Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt
  • 1978: Art exhibition, Dresden
  • 1980: Small gallery in the Maxhütte Art Palace, Unterwellenborn
  • 1982: Small gallery of the Kulturbund, Eisenberg
  • 1983: Small gallery of the Kulturbund, Jena
  • 1985: Gallery in the waiting rooms, Stadtroda and Romantikerhaus, Jena
  • 1988: Art exhibition, Dresden
  • 1990: Jena Art Association, Small Gallery, Jena
  • 2008: Octagon of the University of Fine Arts , Dresden
  • 2018: Jena State Museums, Art Collection: “Erika John. Everything is I - painting and drawings ” : first detailed presentation of the artist's artistic work on the occasion of her 75th birthday, Jena Art Collection , May 19 - August 12, 2018
  • 2019: Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau-Roßlau, art collection: “Erika John. Everything is ME - paintings and drawings "

literature

  • Dix, Manuela (author); Stephan, Erik (editor); Stein, Ingeborg (author): Erika John - Everything is I - drawings, paintings and photographs. Exhibition catalog, 176 pages, A4 format, Jena 2018, ISBN 978-3-942176-95-8
  • Erika John: My seal hole in the ice - diaries & pictures. Edited by Ingeborg Stein and Manfred Jendryschik , 290 pages, A4 format. Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-95486-393-8 .

Varia

In 2015, the Towanda Jena women's center suggested naming a path in Jena to commemorate, honor and honor Erika John. A traveling exhibition portraying Erika John and twelve other women personalities was intended to make this goal known and to attract public approval and support.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erika John , Bildatlas Kunst in der DDR , accessed on April 8, 2015
  2. ↑ https://www.kunstsammlung-jena.de/fm/2316/FB%20John_klein.pdf - accessed on July 13, 2018
  3. ↑ Women's names for Jena's streets ( memento from February 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) , exhibition catalog, Jena 2015, page 15; Retrieved February 19, 2017
  4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jenapolis.de
  5. ^ Information from Ingeborg Stein
  6. ↑ p. 201 in: Erika John: My seal hole in the ice - diaries & pictures. Edited by Ingeborg Stein and Manfred Jendryschik, Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-95486-393-8 .
  7. ↑ Ingeborg Stein on p. 280 in: Erika John: My seal hole in the ice - diaries & pictures. Edited by Ingeborg Stein and Manfred Jendryschik, Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-95486-393-8 .
  8. ^ Information from Ingeborg Stein
  9. ↑ https://lichtstadt.blogspot.de/2013_12_01_archive.html , accessed on February 18, 2017
  10. ↑ https://www.kunstsammlung-jena.de/fm/2316/FB%20John_klein.pdf - accessed on July 13, 2018
  11. ^ Dix, Manuela (author); Stephan, Erik (editor); Stein, Ingeborg (author): Erika John - Everything is I - drawings, paintings and photographs. Exhibition catalog, 176 pages, A4 format, Jena 2018, ISBN 978-3-942176-95-8 , page 19
  12. ↑ Exhibition information: Erika John. Everything is ME - paintings and drawings. 2018 marks the 75th birthday of Erika John. On this occasion, the Jena Art Collection is dedicating an exhibition to this sensitive artist who will present her unique visual artistic work in detail for the first time. Art collection Jena , online portal. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 15, 2018 ; accessed on May 30, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kunstsammlung-jena.de
  13. ↑ The book, which was realized on the initiative of Ingeborg Stein and writer Wulf Kirsten in the Projekt Verlag in Halle (Saale) , aims to stimulate rediscovering Erika John as “an artist of at least national standing. Erika John, a stranger in two social systems, withdrew from the public eye in the last decade of her life after she had brought about a thousand astonishing drawings into the world. Their diaries also provide very interesting information. ” - Source: The blurb of the book
  14. ↑ DNB 1036235262
  15. ↑ http://www.frauenzentrum-jena.de/wordpress/?page_id=3463 , accessed on February 18, 2017
  16. ↑ Women's names for Jena's streets ( memento from February 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) , catalog for the traveling exhibition of the same name, Jena 2015, accessed on February 19, 2017
personal data
SURNAME John, Erika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena
DATE OF DEATH between March 1, 2007 and January 25, 2008
Place of death Jena