Francis Bott

Francis Bott (born March 8, 1904 in Frankfurt am Main ; † November 7, 1998 in Lugano , Ticino ; actually Ernst Bott ) was, as a German painter, a representative of the “Second École de Paris ”, the French “ Informel ”. His artistic work has two seemingly opposing emphases: surreal, fantastic representationalism and tachistic , geometric abstraction. His work consists of paintings , stained glass , hand drawings , watercolors , gouaches , sculptures and objects; He has also worked as a set designer.

Francis Bott 1978 in front of his studio in Breganzona (Lugano)

Unhoused life

Francis Bott comes from a middle-class background, but an unsteady youth led him early on with his parents to France , Belgium , Holland and Switzerland . From 1910 he attended various, mostly French-speaking schools and boarding schools in Switzerland and Belgium. In 1918 the family returned to Germany ( Cologne ), where Bott met Anton Räderscheidt, among others, and joined the circle around Heinrich Hoerle and Max Ernst . Attempts to work as a cook or in his father's office failed.

Influenced by conversations with the “Cologne Progressives” and their anti-war sentiments, Bott built an anarchist worldview. After his father's death in 1921, his urge for individual freedom prompted him to take up a wandering life with the so-called vagabond scene as a left-wing politically committed vagabond, in the course of which he ended up in Berlin and as a stowaway or ship cook in the USA and Mexico .

In 1924 Bott met Herwarth Walden and the circle around the " storm " in Berlin . In the same year he met his future wife Maria Gruschka ("Manja") in Dresden , a daughter of a rabbi who was born in Poland. Back in Berlin, Bott became interested in the theater in 1925 when he met Bertolt Brecht .

In 1926 Bott and Manja went to Vienna . He now earned his living as a street singer, occasional actor and postcard painter. In the meantime, his connection to Bertolt Brecht remained intact, and so Bott and Manja joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1928 . In 1930 the global economic crisis forced the couple to move from Vienna to Frankfurt am Main to join party friends, but in 1932 they were back in Vienna. In absentia in Frankfurt am Main, Bott was sentenced to imprisonment there because of his political activities there. He was arrested in Nuremberg in 1933 , but managed to escape back to Vienna. Arrested there too, he was supposed to be deported to Germany, but he was brought to the Czech border, and so Francis Bott and Manja ended up in Prague .

Here he came into contact with the Austrian expressionist Oskar Kokoschka . This convinced him that he was a painter, and so Bott was induced by him to turn to art in general from now on.

In 1936 Bott and Manja had to leave Czechoslovakia and came via Zagreb ( Yugoslavia ) and Northern Italy to Paris in 1937 , where Bott met Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso personally. After brief participation in the Spanish civil war in the Thälmann battalion , the French capital became the couple's center of life.

In 1938 Francis Bott became a co-founder of the " Free German Artists Association ". When the war began on August 1, 1939, he was interned; he volunteered for the French army, but was initially sent to various camps. In 1940 Bott was assigned to a unit of the British Army and so came to Toulouse , where Manja had already arrived. After the end of the fighting, Bott was included in a list of 87 German resistance fighters who were to be extradited to the National Socialists according to the armistice agreement. He went into hiding and worked as a woodcutter in Couiza south of Carcassonne in the Corbières .

On October 14, 1940, Francis Bott married Maria Gruschka, a concession to the bourgeois world from which he came. When German troops occupied “Vichy France” on November 11, 1942, Francis and Manja Bott retired to Aurillac in the Cantal department (central France), and Bott joined the resistance group of “ Francs-tireurs et partisans ”. After Paris was liberated in 1944, Bott and his wife returned there, and Bott made a living doing casual work. In 1946 Bott moved into a studio with Manja on Montparnasse . France remained his adopted home. In 1961, Manja died of illnesses she contracted during the period of persecution.

In 1967 Bott married a second time in Basel - the doctor Aida Hussein, with whom he lived alternately in Paris, Munich (until April 1969) and Leonberg near Stuttgart (October 1969 to September 1970), where Aida worked as an anesthetist. In 1970 Aida got a job in Locarno ; Bott now lived alternately in Paris and Losone . From 1974 Aida found permanent employment in Lugano ; Bott lived alternately in Breganzona and Paris. Although from 1970 on he lived mainly in Ticino , Switzerland , most recently in Ponte Tresa , and worked in his studio in Breganzona (now a district of Lugano), Bott maintained his studio on Montparnasse until shortly before his death in 1998.

Artistic work

The artistic career of Francis Bott is as changeable and unsteady as his personal life: beginning in the 1930s in the style of New Objectivity , he found his way through his acquaintance with Max Ernst and friendship with Francis Picabia as well as his involvement with Salvador Dalí in the 1940s to surrealism . In 1948 Bott turned to abstraction , which - as he put it - "the new world language of avant-garde art". Essential for his artistic success was his meeting with Alix de Rothschild , whom Bott met in 1952; she bought his first painting and granted him a scholarship for a year. In the 1950s and 1960s he achieved his personal expression in the abstract, expressive application of paints, especially his “Bott-Blau”. An independent work was created from themes of abstract, strongly colored design; it became his most convincing pictures.

Francis Bott's artistic success grew. In the summer semester of 1962 he taught as a guest lecturer at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts . Since the early 1960s his work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in Europe.

In his last creative phase, which began in the 1970s and was characterized by a return to his surrealist roots from around 1976, Bott took back his eruptive forms of expression; his paintings and gouaches now showed spatial “constructions”. They became more agreeable, allowed the representation of human figures again and sometimes reflected the cheerfulness of wise old age. In the end, Francis Bott himself saw his abstract and surreal works as a unified work, as a synthesis of lifelong creativity.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1941: Montpellier, Galerie Bonnet

• 1948: Paris, Lydia Conti Gallery
• 1949: Paris, Galerie des Deux Iles; Montpellier, Bonnet Gallery
• 1951: "Zwei Pariser Maler" (together with Henri Nouveau), Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Wiesbaden, Kassel, Amerika-Hauser;
• Wuppertal, Parnass Gallery; Cologne, gallery of mirrors
• 1952: Paris, Baribizon Gallery
• 1953: Lima, Galerie Coungloa; Paris, Galerie de l'Edition-Imprimerie
• 1954: Paris, Atelier du Maître-Verrier Jean-Jacques Gruber
• 1955: Zurich, Kunsthaus; Paris, Michel Warren Gallery; Frankfurt / M., Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath
• 1956: Munich, Otto Stangl Gallery; London, Zwemmer Gallery; Basel, Galerie d'art moderne
• 1957: La Chaux-de-Fonds, Galerie Numaga; Berlin, Bremer Gallery
• 1958: Paris, Galerie Le Gendre and Galerie Bellechasse; Ascona, Galleria La Cittadella;
• Basel Galerie d'art moderne; Hagen, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum; Winterthur, Gallery ABC
• 1959: Paris, Galerie Le Gendre; London, Zwemmer Gallery; Oberhausen, Municipal Gallery; Basel, Galerie l'art moderne
• 1960: St. Gallen, gallery in the bay window; Düsseldorf, Hella Nebelung Gallery
• 1961: Rapperswil, Gallery 58; Bern, Schindler Gallery; Grenchen, Toni Brechbühl gallery; Basel, Galerie l'art moderne
• 1962: Oslo, Horst Halvorsen's art trade; Paris, Kriegel Gallery; Bochum, municipal art gallery; Darmstadt, Art Association; Bremen, art gallery
• 1963: Düsseldorf, Hella Nebelung Gallery
• 1964: Lucerne, Galerie Räber; Toronto, Roberts Gallery
• 1966: Zurich, Beno Gallery
• 1967: Kreuzlingen, Latzer Gallery; Freiburg, Gallery Graves
• 1968: Liestal, Galeria Seiler; Madrid, Galeria da Vinci
• 1969: Toronto, Roberts Gallery; Zurich, Coray Gallery
• 1970: Basel, Galerie Hilt and at their booth ART 1'70; Basel, Atelier Edition Lanz
• 1971: Montreux, Galerie Leresche; Grenchen, Toni Brechbühl gallery
• 1973: Tenero, Galleria Matasci
• 1977: Amsterdam, Galerie d'Eendt; Campione d'Italia, Galleria Henze and at their stand in Basel ART 8'77
• 1978: Frankfurt / M., Frankfurter Kunstkabinett
• 1979: Bern, Galerie Schindler
• 1981: Campione d'Italia, Galleria Henze; Lugano, Biblioteca Cantonale; Metz - Pont-à-Mousson, Abbaye des Prémontres
• 1984: Lugano, Hotel Splendid; Campione d'Italia, Galleria Henze and at their stand in Basel ART 15'84 and in Cologne, ART COLOGNE 1984
• 1985: Lugano, Overland Trust Bank
• 1987: Lugano, Municipal Art Hall in the Villa Malpensata; Munich, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer
• 1989: Lugano, Galleria d'Arte La colomba
• 1990: Hamburg, Westhoff Gallery; March - Hugstetten, Galerie Regio
• 1991: Frankfurt / M., Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath
• 1997: Orangerie-Reinz Gallery, Cologne
• 2002: Galerie Königsblau, Stuttgart
• 2004: Henze & Ketterer Gallery, Wichtrach / Bern; Modern Art Matters, Zurich
• 2005: Kunsthalle Ziegelhütte, Appenzell
• 2009: Museo Cantonale d'Arte Lugano, Lugano

Works in public collections (selection)

• Aukland, City Art Gallery
• Basel, art museum
• Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts
• Hagen, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum
• Kaiserslautern, Pfalzgalerie
• Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum
• Lausanne, Musée des Beaux-Arts
• Luxembourg, Musée de l'Etat
• Montreal, Musée d'art Contemporain
• Moutier, Musée Jurassien des Beaux-Arts
• New York, Museum of Modern Art
• Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne
• Saint-Etienne, Musée d'Art et d'Industrie
• Stuttgart, Domnick Collection
• Zurich, Kunsthaus
• and in private collections at home and abroad

literature

• Wolfgang Henze: "Francis Bott - The Complete Works", Stuttgart and Zurich, 1988
• Michel Seuphor: Francis Bott. Introduction. In: Exhibition invitation Galerie des Deux Iles, Paris 1949
• U. Bluhm (Ursula Schultze-Bluhm): Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Two Parisian painters, Francis Bott, oil paintings and graphics, Henri Nouveau, oil paintings, Frankfurt / M. 1951, with texts by F. Picabia and JP Mougin
• Bernard Dorival: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Cinq Vitraux et huit Maquettes exécutés par Francis Bott dans l'atelier du Maître-Verrier Jean Jacques Gruber, Paris 1954
• Michel Seuphor: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Kunsthaus Zurich 1955
• Michel Seuphor: Introduction. In: Exhibition catalog, Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt / M. 1955
• Michel Seuphor u. JEEilson: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. The Zwemmer Gallery, London 1956
• JE Eilson: Introduction. In: Exhibition invitation, Galerie d'art moderne, Basel 1956
• Jean-Francois Chabrun: "Francis Bott and the mirror of individuality". In: Francis Bott. Collection Prisme, Paris 1957
• Michel Seuphor: "Francis Bott". In: "Francis Bott. Collection Prisme", Paris 1957
• Will Grohmann: Introduction. In: Exhibition invitation Galerie Bremer, Berlin 1957
• Jean-Francois Chabrun: "Francis Bott or the mirror of one kind". In: Aust.-Kat. Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen 1958
• Jean Grenier: "Francis Bott". In: Preuves, Paris, April 1959
• OM Chase: "Francis Bott". In: Exhibition cat. Zwemmer Gallery, London 1959
• Gerald Lechner: "Francis Bott". In: Exhibition cat. Toni Brechbühl Gallery, Grenchen 1961
• Marcel Brion: "Francis Bott". Amriswil 1962
• Michel Seuphor: "Half a Century of Abstract Painting". Munich-Zurich 1962
• Jaques Lassaigne: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Galerie Kriegel, Paris 1962
• Jean Cassou: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Galerie Kriegel, Paris 1962
• Jean Cassou: Francis Bott. In: Exhibition cat. Municipal art gallery, Bochum 1962
• Denys Chevalier: "Bott". Paris, Musée de Poche, 1963
• Friedrich Hagen: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Galerie Räber, Lucerne 1964
• Jean-Francois Chabrun: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Galerie Räber, Lucerne 1964
• JR Alfaro: "El Paraiso Mental de Francis Bott". In: Exhibition cat. Galeria da Vinci, Madrid 1968
• Werner Jehle: "Espaces Concertés". In: Exhibition cat. Hilt Gallery, Basel 1970
• Wolfgang Henze: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Galleria Henze, Campione d'Italia and ART Basel 1977
• Exhibition cat. Francis Bott. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt / M. 1978
• Anton Henze: "Francis Bott 75 years old". In: Weltkunst, Munich March 15, 1979
• Edouard Jaguer: "Peinture Miroir Transformant". In: Ellebore, H. 7, Paris 1983
• Wolfgang Henze: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Galleria Henze, Campione d'Italia, and ART Basel 1984
• Giancarlo Viscardi: Introduction. In: Exhibition cat. Francis Bott, Lugano, Villa Malpensata, 1987
• Walter Schönenberger: "Francis Bott". In: Exhibition cat. Francis Bott, Lugano, Villa Malpensata, 1987
• Edouard Jaguer: "Suractualité de Francis Bott". In: Exhibition cat. Francis Bott, Lugano, Villa Malpensata, 1987

Web links

• Literature by and about Francis Bott in the catalog of the German National Library
• Galerie Henze & Ketterer about Francis Bott - works, biography, exhibitions, bibliography
• Suzanne Kappeler: Bott, Francis. In: Sikart