Ferdinand crowd

Ferdinand crowd

Ferdinand Quantity (born October 29, 1876 in Freienbessingen , † July 28, 1962 in Sondershausen ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

childhood and education

On October 29, 1876, Ferdinand Quantity came as the son of the elementary school teacher Ferdinand Christoph Quantity (1849–1877) and his wife Marie Quantity (1863–1916), b. Schönichen, in Freienbessingen , a northern Thuringian village in the Kyffhäuserkreis , to the world. He was the youngest of 3 brothers and had 2 half-brothers who were born from his father's first marriage.

He spent his school days from 1877 to 1895 in Sondershausen , where the family had moved four years earlier, and attended the princely secondary school . Even here, his artistic talent became apparent early on.

From 1887 the artistic promotion began by the special house painter and drawing teacher Paul Stade , who instructed him in a two-year artistic training from 1895. He then attended a private art school in Quedlinburg , from 1898 to 1899 he was a pupil of Friedrich Fehr in Munich and between 1899 and 1904 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Karl Raupp and Ludwig von Löfftz .

He undertook his “years of wandering” from 1899 through Upper Bavaria , Austria , Northern Italy and Switzerland . In 1904 the crowd stayed temporarily in Leipzig . In 1907 he traveled to Northern Germany.

Special houses time

Finally he returned to Sondershausen in 1904 and worked here as a freelance painter. The orders were plentiful, so he became very successful and respected. The main source of income were portraits from high-ranking personalities in Sondershausen and the surrounding area. Furthermore, posters and greeting card designs, calendar and yearbook designs, overpainting or coloring of photographs were created.

During the First World War he was drafted as a soldier at the age of almost 40 and served on the Eastern Front.

After the war, Menge built on old successes and received numerous commissions, for example he developed designs for the 1921 special houses Notgeld .

With the global economic crisis in 1929 , the order situation deteriorated, so that he got into acute financial and economic difficulties. So he took a job at the special houses cadastral office , designed facades and painted company signs.

At 59, he contracted lupus vulgaris , a local skin tuberculosis , which seriously disfigured his face. He then withdrew into isolation and became even more shy. Nevertheless, his artistic work did not end there. In 1945 he was admitted to the church “Stift” nursing home in Sondershausen because he had become in need of care and assistance.

Quantity died in Sondershausen on July 28, 1962.

Exhibitions

Sondershausen (1962, 1976/77) a. a.

Work areas

Painting ( oil and tempera ), watercolor , gouache , pastel , hand drawing , etching

style

He took up the Dutch painting of the 17th century , the late Romanticism , the Biedermeier and the painterly realism of the 19th century , mainly one can describe his style as Heimatkunst . Most of his pictures were colorful, deeply life-affirming. Portraits look very lively and reflect their character. In landscape works, the figures are often not fully modeled, not physiognomically interpreted and often small and shadowy on the edges of the picture.

Motifs

Landscapes, architectural images and genre representations are Menge's main motifs. Provincial pictorial themes, such as his regional living space, especially Sondershausen , Stockhausen and the surrounding area, characterize his work. Mountains, the forests, their silence, unspoiled nature, the majestic beauty of the Alps also moved him.

literature

• Ferdinand Menge - from Life and Work , Ed .: Staatliche Museen Sondershausen, 1988
• Personalities in Sondershausen , Cultural Office of the City of Sondershausen, 1993