François Willi Wendt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

François (Franz) Willi Wendt (born November 16, 1909 in Berlin , † May 15, 1970 in Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine) ) was a French painter.

He was an important representative of abstract painting in the Nouvelle École de Paris alongside Roger Bissière , Hans Hartung , André Lanskoy , Serge Poliakoff , Pierre Soulages , Nicolas de Staël and others. After his final decision to paint and because of his resistance to the Nazi regime , he decided to go into exile in France in 1937 . There he became “one of the best and most personal painters of his generation; Artists of high purity and a stable culture, his personal demands, his modesty and also his moral sense have not allowed him to achieve the recognition he deserves for too long. "

Life

François W. Wendt came from a modest socialist Berlin family. After attending the “ Gymnasium Zum Grauen Kloster ” in Berlin, he passed his Abitur in 1928 . From 1928 to 1934 he studied philosophy at the universities of Berlin , Heidelberg and Freiburg im Breisgau with professors Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers as well as literary history and art history. He also drew and painted, especially with Julius Bissier ; he was well acquainted with Herwarth Walden and created his first abstract paintings in 1931.

In 1928, through his father's mediation, he became a member of the SPD in Berlin. Since then he has also belonged to the socialist student union and most recently to the Red Student Group (RSG). During this period he was friends with Joachim Memel, the writer Bellac, the painter Rostà, the publisher Walter Kahnert and Werner Stein.

The National Socialist Gleichschaltung however, forced him in 1934 when he had already prepared for the doctorate in philosophy and the state exam to abandon the planned scientific and educational career, and he decided to leave the university.

In the summers of 1936 and 1937, he traveled to Italy to continue his training as a painter with Adolf Fleischmann and to study archeology. His final decision to work as a painter was made during this period.

In autumn 1937 he emigrated to France with his girlfriend Greta Saur / Sauer under the guise of scientific studies . In Paris he visited Fernand Léger's atelier and became friends with Wassily Kandinsky , Robert Delaunay , Otto Freundlich and Serge Poliakoff . In 1938, with the help of Robert Desnos and Robert Delaunay, he was recognized by the French authorities as a "political refugee".

From September 1939 he was taken to various French internment camps ( Orléans , Cepoy (verrerie de Montenon), Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence , Nîmes ) and penal camps ( Aubagne , Fort de Chapoly near Lyon ) as an "undesirable foreigner" he fled underground. At that time he found protection with Robert Minder and P. Andry-Farcy, the director of the museum in Grenoble , and lived with the identity of "François Aymon" first in Grenoble, then in "La Tronche", where his girlfriend Greta Saur / Sauer, has found asylum after her arrest at Camp de Gurs . It was there that he met Charlotte Greiner, who had fled Alsace and whom he married in 1945.

His father Wilhelm Wendt committed suicide in Berlin in 1943 because he was threatened with loss of work and the danger of denunciation due to political disputes.

In 1945 he moved to Paris and took up university studies again, working particularly on German Expressionism, continuing his pictorial abstract research and rejoining the reorganized artistic movement. He showed his works as part of the “Salon des Surindépendants” and, after its founding in 1946, also belonged to the “Salon des Réalités Nouvelles”. At this salon, he campaigned to ensure that German painters stigmatized by the Nazi regime could exhibit their works.

After the birth of his first daughter Marthe Wendt in 1946, he and his family moved into an apartment and studio on Rue Hoche in Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine) near Paris, where a large part of his work was created. In 1947 the son Claude was born.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In 1949, he became friends with Roger Van Gindertael, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the "Revue Cimaise" and the Paris edition of the "Beaux Arts" de Bruxelles and an art critic in the French newspaper "Combat". Under conditions that were uncertain for him, such as statelessness, a temporary residence permit and low income, the first solo and group exhibitions took place, which earned him a meteoric rise and recognition from his colleagues among the painters. The painter Karskaya later recalled: “... he was the most authentic and even the most faithful painter; he couldn't sign his pictures, it was enough to have one in mind to find it, without his signature, in these Babylonian salons ”.

In 1960 his second daughter Anouk was born. In the following decade he followed the realization of his work in great anonymity, but under the admiring gaze of some loyal friends and his wife Charlotte, who supported him all his life.

In 1968, with the help of Roger Bissière , Pierre Soulages , Olivier Debré , Bernard Dorival , director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne (MNAM) and the support of Robert Minder ( Collège de France ), he obtained French citizenship.

He suddenly died on May 15, 1970 in his French home in Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine) .

Works

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Although he is almost a veteran of abstract art - because he was part of it even before the Second World War, when this aesthetic and ontological revolution in Paris only took place in secret - it was clear to François Willi Wendt from the beginning that the new, The means of meaning given to the artistic act require a deeper identity of fundus and form, precisely in order to achieve reality. That is why François Willi Wendt has become an exemplary case for the latest art. All the more so since through the long loyalty to his conception he has already reached perfection in what is now being striven for by younger painters. His aim has always been a dense and rhythmic structure with a coherence that catches up with that of matter. For François Willi Wendt, the living reality of painting coincided with the duration of the real. But he did not let his painting become dependent on any impulse received from the outside world, at least not on an impulse that had become clear and conscious to him. He never wanted to voluntarily confuse painting with natural phenomena in his pictures or with what he felt before natural phenomena. If nature is still present in his work or the viewer of his pictures believes he is discovering nature there, then it is much less according to what it started from, and more because a general order is the physical milieu and the mental space of man certainly. Both unite and become the place where the work of art has to stand as the materialization of an existence. Thus the temporary unity of man and the universe is completed in the act of painting alone. The eye and mind are wide open to an immeasurable, even unlimited space, and this space has actually become “his space” even before it is on the canvas for the Mahler and the viewer. This expansion in nature can be felt in each of Wendt's pictures, through the tension of dense structure. Through the light of painting this tension has mostly become almost imponderable, as well as through the strong degree of perfection and lucidity of consciousness.

Solo exhibitions

  • 1951 Paris, Galerie Colette Allendy (France)
  • 1954 Wuppertal , Galerie Parnass (Dir .: Rolf Jahresling ) (Germany)
  • 1955 Düsseldorf , Center d'Etudes françaises (Germany)
  • 1955 Lausanne, Galerie L'Entracte (Dir .: E. Genton) (Switzerland)
  • 1955 Ascona, Galerie La Citadella (Dir .: Gisèle Real) (Switzerland)
  • 1959 Paris, Paul Facchetti Gallery (France)
  • 1963 Trier , with Greta Saur / Sauer, Städtisches Museum (Dir .: Curt Schweicher ) (Germany)
  • 1964 Frankfurt am Main , Galerie Dorothea Loehr (Germany)
  • 1971 Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine) , "Châtillon des Arts", retrospective exhibition (France)
  • 1972 Paris, Foyer International d'Accueil de Paris, retrospective exhibition (France)

Group exhibitions

Group exhibitions with manifesto character

  • 1954 Paris, Galerie Arnaud: "Divergences"
  • 1955 Paris Galerie Craven: "Six peintres actuels" Istrati , Kolos-Vary, Wilfrid Moser , Nallard, Vulliamy et Wendt (organization: R. Van Gindestael)
  • 1955 Paris, Galerie R. Creuze: "Phases de l'art contemporain" (organization: E. Jaguer)
  • 1957 Paris, Galerie Greuze: "50 ans de peinture abstraite"
  • 1956/1957 Paris Galerie Arnaud: «Pentagone», (artists selected by Michel Ragon, Pierre Restany, Roger Van Gindestael, Herta Wescher and Julien Alvard)
  • 1960 Paris, Raymonde Cazenav Gallery: “Permanence et actualité de la peinture” with Chafic Abboud, Roger Bissière , Camille Bryen, Chapoval, Oscar Gauthier, Alexandre Istrati , André Lanskoy , Milo, Wilfrid Moser , Louis Nallard, Jean Pougny / Iwan Albertowitsch Puni , Pierre Soulages , Nicolas de Staël , Serge Vulliamy and François W. Wendt (organization: R. Van Gindertael)
  • 1961, 1962, 1963 Montrouge : “La Vache Noire”, “Salon de Montrouge”, “Ligne 4”.

literature

  • RV Gindestael: Premier bilan de l'art actuel , in: Le Soleil Noir No. 3 and 4, 1953
  • H. Wescher: "  Hans Hartung , Henry / Heinrich Maria Davringhausen / Davring, François W. Wendt, Jean Leppien , Ferdinand Springer , Greta Saur / Sauer et Wols  ". in: Arts d'aujourd'hui. Series 4, No. 6, August, 1953.
  • Roger Van Gindestael: Twelve lithographs by the artists Calliyannis, Constant Anton Nieuwenhuis , Carrey, Natalia Dumitresco, Hilton, Poliakoff , Istrati , Stephen Gilbert, Greta Saur / Sauer, Pons, Selim Turan and Wendt. Printed by J. Pons, published by RV Gindertael, Paris 1953.
  • RV Gindestael: Wendt , in: Cimaise. No. 5, 1954.
  • RV Gindestael: Divergences. 1954.
  • RV Gindestael: Propos sur la peinture actuelle. 1955.
  • RV Gindestael: Peintres d'origine allemande en France: Francis Bott , Breuer , Heinrich Maria Davringhausen (Davring), Max Ernst , Adolf Fleischmann , Albert Flocon , Otto Freundlich , Johnny Friedlaender , Hans Hartung , Jean Leppien , Hans Reichel , Greta Saur / Sauer, Ferdinand Springer , François W. Wendt and Wols . In: Allemagne d'aujourd'hui. No. 4 and 5, 1957.
  • RV Gindestael: The choice of an art critic: Wilfrid Moser , Louis Nallard, François W. Wendt. In: L'Oeil, No. 55/56, 1959.
  • Herta Wescher: Wendt, In: Cimaise. No. VI / 5, 1959.
  • RV Gindestael: Permanence et actualité de la peinture. Chafic Abboud, Roger Bissière , Camille Bryen, Chapoval, Oscar Gauthier, Alexandre Istrati , André Lanskoy , Milo, Wilfrid Moser , Louis Nallard, Jean Pougny / Iwan Albertowitsch Puni , Pierre Soulages , Nicolas de Staël , Serge Vulliamy and François W. Wendt, 1960.
  • RV Gindestael: Réflexions sur l'Ecole de Paris. In: Quadrum. n ° 9, 1960.
  • Michel Seuphor : Dictionnaire de la peinture abstraite. Edition Hazan, 1957.
  • Madeleine Rousseau: Wendt, a painter in his studio. In: Le Musée Vivant. No. 17/18, 1963.
  • RV Gindestael: Greta Saur / Sauer - François Willi Wendt. Catalog of the exhibition in the Trier Municipal Museum, 1963.
  • FW Wendt: Catalog of the retrospective exhibition - Châtillon-des-Arts, 1971; RJ Moulin, François W. Wendt or the invitation to life , R. Van Gindertael, François W. Wendt, the man and the work , testimonials from Robert Minder , Professor at the Collège de France , Robert Fontené et Morice Lipsi, President and Vice- President of the “Salon des Réalités Nouvelles”, Herta Wescher, art critic and art historian, Karskaya, painter.
  • André Almuro: Peinture, musique: FW Wendt. May 15, 1972 (radio broadcast on « France Culture »)
  • Michel Ragon and Michel Seuphor : L'art abstrait, 1945-1970 (Volume 4). Maeght Editeur, 1974.
  • W. Balzer and AW Bierman: Meeting point Parnass Wuppertal 1949-1965. Art and Museum Association Wuppertal, Von der Heidt-Museum (Germany), 1980.
  • Marie-Amélie zu Salm-Salm: Echanges artistiques franco-allemands et renaissance de la peinture abstraite dans les pays germaniques après 1945. Edition L'Harmattan, 2004.
  • Martin Schieder: In the View of the Other, Franco-German Art Relations 1945-1959. Passages - Center allemand d'histoire de l'art, Akademie Verlag, 2005.
  • Arthur Cavanna, Daniel Shidlower, Domitille d'Orgeval: Catalog of the exhibition "Réalités nouvelles 1948-1955". Drouart Gallery (Paris), 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roger Van Gindertael, art critic: François Wendt n'est plus. In: Les Lettres françaises n ° 1336 on 27 May 1970 .
  2. ↑ Martin Schieder : In the view of the other, the Franco-German art relations 1945-1959
  3. ^ Notes biographiques , in: Catalog of the retrospective exhibition - Châtillon-des-Arts, 1971
  4. ↑ Notes biographiques. In: Catalog of the retrospective exhibition - Châtillon-des-Arts, 1971
  5. ^ Témoignages in the catalog of the retrospective exhibition - Châtillon-des-Arts, 1971 .
personal data
SURNAME Wendt, François Willi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wendt, Franz Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter of the Informel
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1970
Place of death Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine)