Frans Masereel

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Frans Masereel (born July 30, 1889 in Blankenberge , † January 3, 1972 in Avignon ) was an important Belgian graphic artist , draftsman , painter and pacifist .

Mosaic by Frans Masereel on a Villeroy & Boch factory building in Mettlach

Life

Masereel spent his childhood in his hometown on the Belgian coast. He showed musical talents early on. From 1907 to 1908 he attended the art academy in Ghent . In 1910 he moved to Paris with Pauline Imhoff, his future wife, and in 1915 to Switzerland. There he joined the International Red Cross in Geneva and joined the circle of pacifists around Henri Guilbeaux and Romain Rolland . Stefan Zweig became his friend. a. with Kasimir Edschmid , Rilke , Hermann Hesse , Theodor Däubler and Sternheim .

The first etchings and woodcuts by Masereel appeared in some magazines as early as 1913, but it was only in Switzerland that it reached a larger audience. The magazines demain , les tablettes and above all the newspaper la feuille published his drawings and woodcuts, la feuille alone nearly a thousand anti-war drawings .

Masereel gained prominence in French and German pacifist publications during World War I and thereafter.

From 1917 the first linoleum and woodcut series and graphic novels - a completely new form of expression - as well as illustrations for books were created. Initially self-published and published by smaller publishers, established houses soon got involved in Masereel's works, especially Kurt Wolff in Munich. His picture stories, such as My Book of Hours and The Sun , found widespread circulation in Germany with print runs of 100–150,000. Masereel became one of the most famous wood cutters and draftsmen in the interwar period, cultivating a wide range of friendships and acquaintances, including personalities such as Romain Rolland , Stefan Zweig , Hermann Hesse , Klaus Mann , Thomas Mann , Carl Sternheim and Thea Sternheim , Henry van de Velde , George Grosz , Kurt Tucholsky , Bert Brecht . The brochure Frans Masereel and his friends gives an overview of his numerous relationships .

After Masereel had settled back in Paris from 1922, he turned increasingly to painting. Inspired by the Parisian atmosphere, he first created his famous watercolors that reflect Paris at night, such as rue, la nuit , sur le trottoir and jazz nègre . First exhibitions at Billiet in Paris caused a sensation. In the coastal town of Equihen, near Boulogne-sur-Mer , the Masereels bought a fisherman's house in 1924. Masereel regularly spent the summer months there until 1939 and increasingly turned to oil painting. In three years there were around 100 pictures with which he became internationally known as a painter. In 1929 and 1930 he reached the height of his ability with monumental portraits such as Femme Assise , L'Accordéoniste and seascapes. The first retrospective in the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1929 with 200 works was the high point of Masereel's artistic career. 11 more solo exhibitions followed, so that 1930 was a kind of Masereel year. In 1940 the Masereels fled Paris to the south of France: Stays in Avignon with a studio in the Papal Palace and later in the Lot-et-Garonne department . In 1949 they settled in Nice. A year later Masereel received the grand prize for graphics at the Biennale di Venezia .

He was also very popular in the communist states: In the Soviet occupation zone , the book Frans Masereel was published in 1949 with numerous graphics by the artist . In 1957 he visited East Berlin on the occasion of the exhibition at the German Academy of the Arts, in 1958 he made a trip to China (exhibition in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan). After the death of his wife Pauline, he married Laure Malclès, his long-time lover. Masereel died in 1972. He is buried in the Sint-Amandsberg cemetery in Ghent.

A detailed tabular overview of Masereel's life and work is provided by Paul Ritter's exhibition brochure on the artist's 100th birthday.

Act

Masereel represented a consistent humanism in his art . He portrayed people in their forlornness and abandonment in modern civilization, without being able to be considered a pessimist. Because at the same time he provided examples of possible courses of action in order to secure the human element in a dehumanizing world that it deserves. Examples are the 80 woodcuts The Face of Hamburg or the 100 woodcuts from the cycle ' Die Stadt (1925). In 1919 he published his series of 167 woodcuts, My Book of Hours , which Kurt Wolff published in Germany in 1920 . In 1920 the idea followed , an allegorical story in 83 woodcuts, which appeared in Germany in 1959. It is about a man's idea of ​​a naked woman, who then becomes independent and whether her nudity comes into conflict with the authorities.

Masereel became friends with Henry Gowa , who brought him to Saarbrücken after the end of the war , where from 1947 to 1951 he led the master class for painting at the newly founded school for arts and crafts .

On September 26, 1953, Frans Masereel, together with the German artists HAP Grieshaber , Erich Heckel , Gerhard Marcks , Ewald Mataré , Otto Pankok , Max Pechstein , Karl Rössing and others , suggested founding the XYLON Societé Internationale des Graveurs sur Bois in Zurich . This establishment of the International Association of Wood Cutters XYLON was decided and Masereel was its first president .

In 1956 Masereel created another large woodblock print, 100 sheets under the title Mijn Land . In 1964 Masereel received the German Trade Union Confederation's Culture Prize .

There is a permanent exhibition of Masereel works in the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee near Antwerp.

Book illustrations

literature

  • Stefan Zweig , Arthur Holitscher : Frans Masereel. Overall title: Graphic artists of our time, volume 1. Axel Juncker Verlag, Berlin 1923.
  • Luc Durtain: Frans Masereel. Paris 1931
  • Heinrich Rumpel: Frans Masereel . In: Architecture and Art. Vol. 36, Issue 10, 1949, pp. 339-344.
  • Stefan Zweig, Pierre Vorms, Gerhard Pommeranz-Liedtke: Frans Masereel. Dresden 1959.
  • Pierre Vorms: Conversations with Frans Masereel. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1967.
  • Roger Avermaete: Frans Masereel. Stuttgart 1976.
  • Pierre Vorms: Masereel - Catalog raisonné. Mercator Fund, Antwerp 1976.
  • Pierre Vorms: Frans Masereel. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1978.
  • Paris-Berlin 1900–1933: Matches and Opposites France-Germany. Munich 1979, ISBN 3-7913-0466-6 .
  • Arnold Bode : Frans Masereel. Catalog for the exhibition in the foyer of the Paulskirche , Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Paul Ritter: Frans Masereel. Graphic masterpieces from the Paul Ritter Collection. Klingspormuseum, Offenbach 1989.
  • Paul Ritter (Ed.): Frans Masereel: an annotated bibliography of the graphic works. Saur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-11103-7 .
  • Robert Hoozee, Piet Boyens: Vlaams expressionisme in Europese context 1900-1930. Gent 1990, p. 344 ff.
  • Joris van Parys: Masereel: a biography. Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-85990-001-3 .
  • Richard Hamann, Jost Hermand: Epochs of German Culture from 1870 to the Present - Expressionism. Fischer, 1977, ISBN 3-436-02511-9 , pp. 26, 71, 104, 109 and 185.
  • Frans Masereel: My Book of Hours. 165 woodcuts with an introduction by Thomas Mann . Paul List Verlag, Munich 1957.
  • Frans Masereel: The face of Hamburg. 80 woodcuts. Hamburg 1966, Johannes Asmus Verlag, Hamburg 1966.
  • Karl-Ludwig Hofmann, Peter Riede (ed.): Frans Masereel. To realize the dream of a free society. Saarbrücken 1989, ISBN 3-922807-40-2 .
  • Frans Masereel: La Guerre - The War. Frans Masereel's pictures against the war. FMS, Frans-Masereel-Stiftung , Saarbrücken 2010 (54 pages, numerous images, on the occasion of the exhibition from July 2nd to September 12th, 2010 in Heidelberg). E-book. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on January 11, 2020 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.frans-masereel.de

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paris-Berlin 1900–1933. Matches and opposites France-Germany. (Exhibition at the Center Pompidou Paris 1978), Munich, Prestel 1979. p. 490 ff.
  2. ↑ Frans Masereel and his friends. Klingspormuseum Offenbach, 1977.
  3. ↑ Joris van Parys: Masereel - a biography. Edition 8, Zurich 1999, p. 236.
  4. ↑ Joris van Parys, Masereel - a biography , Edition 8, Zurich, 1999, p. 248
  5. ↑ Gerhart Ziller : Frans Masereel. Sachsenverlag, Dresden 1949 (with license 158 from the Soviet military administration in Germany ).
  6. ^ Frans Masereel - Graphic masterpieces from the Paul Ritter collection , Klingspormuseum Offenbach, 1989
  7. ↑ Telling in pictures: Frans Masereel

Web links

Commons : Frans Masereel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Masereel, Frans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Blankenberge
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1972
Place of death Avignon