First phalanx Nedserd

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The Erste Phalanx Nedserd group was created in 1953 as a Dresden artist group with Jürgen Böttcher , Winfried Dierske , Peter Graf , Peter Herrmann , Peter Makolies and AR Penck . Nedserd is an ananym and, when written in reverse, means Dresden. The addition “First Phalanx ” (“first row of a combat line-up”) emphasized the combative orientation of the group and referred to the Munich artist group Phalanx founded in 1901 around Wassily Kandinsky .

history

The origin of the group was a drawing course that Böttcher led as a young academy graduate in the winter semester 1953/54 at the adult education center . Jürgen Böttcher had just completed his studies at the Dresden Art School with Wilhelm Lachnit . The fourteen-year-old student Ralf Winkler (A. R. Penck) and the sixteen-year-old apprentice Peter Herrmann also took part in his course. In addition to drawing as a pure manual skill, both were interested in art and art history in general. Böttcher became a mentor and reference person and people met with friends outside the course to deal with art. A year later, the apprentice stonemason Peter Makolies, Peter Graf and Winfried Dierske joined the group. Böttcher's apartment became a meeting point and the young artists were able to pursue the questions that preoccupied them among friends. The withdrawal into the private sphere was necessary because from the 1950s onwards, every new group of artists in the GDR had to undergo an application and examination procedure. The possibilities for information about art were limited. A socialist realism was demanded and promoted by the state.

Böttcher procured books on both modern art and ancient painting. The group drew and the results discussed together. For everyone involved, as for most painters of the post-war period, Pablo Picasso embodied a central point of reference. The Nedserd group did not represent their own group style, but aimed at artistic work without compromise. For these reasons, the members of the artist group were not allowed to study at the academy. Peter Graf was excluded from the art college after one semester because he did not want to distance himself from Picasso and because he did not want to see that he should go out to harvest in the summer instead of painting. Membership in the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR was also denied. They therefore had to earn a living as workers or craftsmen.

The circle of friends continued after Böttcher moved to Berlin in 1955 to start a new course of study at the Babelsberg Film School . In 1961, Böttcher made the friends the subject of his first independent film entitled " Three of Many ". The film remained banned until 1988 because it did not fit into the image of socialist cultural policy because it showed artists who had to earn their living outside of art.

In 1961 the group was allowed to attend an exhibition initiated by Fritz Cremer and Otto Nagel in the GDR Academy of the Arts under the title “Young Artists. Painting ”. Both artists tried to promote a climate of openness and to offer young artists a forum. They also invited artists not yet officially recognized. The Erste Phalanx Nedserd group received scathing reviews from official criticism. The group's last exhibition, which took place without Böttcher in 1965 in the Pushkinhaus , the clubhouse of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship in Dresden, was canceled prematurely. The artists of the Nedserd group were denied official recognition in this dissident role.

Penck and Herrmann were later involved in the Lücke group formed around 1971 .

Members

See also

literature

  • Petra Jacoby: Collectivization of the imagination? : Artist groups in the GDR between appropriation and inventiveness . Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-627-4 , p. 50 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Christoph Wilhelmi: nedserd . In: Groups of artists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 1900: a manual . Hauswedell, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-7762-1106-7 , p. 248 .
  • Lucius Grisebach: About the morality of art . In: First Phalanx Nedserd. A circle of friends in Dresden 1953–1965; Exhibition in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, October 10 to December 1, 1991 and in the State Lindenau Museum Altenburg, February 9 to April 5, 1992 . Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 1991, ISBN 3-928342-07-X , p. 9-15 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petra Jacoby: Collectivization of the imagination? : Artist groups in the GDR between appropriation and inventiveness . Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-627-4 , p. 50 ( limited preview in Google Book search).