Franz Joseph Esser

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Franz Joseph Esser: Self-portrait with a pipe, India ink on drawing paper, ca.1929

Franz Joseph Esser (born January 16, 1891 in Cologne , † June 18, 1964 in Seefeld , Upper Bavaria ) was a German painter , watercolorist , caricaturist , draftsman and graphic artist who was close to the Cologne progressives .

family

He was the son of the Cologne master shoemaker Franz Anton Hubert Esser (1857-1940) and his wife Anna Maria (1867-1936), née Menné. On October 28, 1933, he married Hedwig Maria Hubertine Schuler (1900–1945), known as "Hetty", the youngest of eleven children of the Cologne businessman Karl Heinrich Hubert Schuler (1849–1912) and Hedwig Caroline Louise (1852–1938), born Welter. The mother of his wife was the daughter of the Cologne history painter Michael Welter . The marriage of Franz Joseph and Hetty Esser had two children, Hedwig Mechtild (* 1935) and Franz Martin (* 1939). After the early death of his first wife, he married Liselotte Backhaus, née Schlueter, in 1950.

education

In 1907, as a 16-year-old schoolboy, Esser began painting oil paintings. In 1910 he passed the school leaving certificate at the Royal Kaiser Wilhelm High School in Cologne. He then studied art history until 1914 at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn under Paul Clemen , at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich under Heinrich Wölfflin . At the universities he also took drawing and modeling courses, where he met Max Ernst . In 1912 he went on a study trip to Constantinople . After completing his studies, he worked as a volunteer at the Königliche Hof glasmalerei Bockhorni in Munich.

Military service

At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Esser volunteered as a war volunteer . He was first deployed on the Western Front on the Somme and in the Vosges , later on the Eastern Front in Galicia and Romania , where he was taken prisoner by Russia in 1917. His subsequent odyssey through various camps in Siberia ( Chabarowsk , Kansk ) and a lengthy journey home through Manchuria can still be understood today based on numerous sketches that he had made. He returned to Germany by sea via Vladivostok .

Professional development

After his return in 1921/22 he initially sought a connection to Berlin's artistic circles and became a member of the “Commune”, which soon dissolved again, in whose 1st and 2nd manifestos he participated together with Otto Freundlich and Raoul Hausmann . Between 1922 and 1925 he stayed with or near his parents in Unkel . From there he made several trips to Prague .

From 1926 he lived mainly in Cologne, where he made several portraits - one litho and three pencil drawings - of Hetty Schuler, his future wife. In the same year he founded the sales group Der Kunstsammler together with Peter Abelen (1884–1962) and Peter Hecker . In the years up to 1933 he established close contacts with the Kölner Progressive group , where he became acquainted with Gerd Arntz , Hannes Maria Flach , Marta Hegemann , Heinrich Hoerle , Franz W. Seiwert and Luise Straus-Ernst .

Between 1927 and 1929, he studied abroad from Cologne to Istanbul and Paris , where he presented his work in solo exhibitions. In 1928/29 the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne acquired several works by Esser. In 1929 he and Adolf Schleicher took part in a double exhibition at the Cologne art salon Dr. Becker & Newman .

Between 1930 and 1933 he worked part-time as a press draftsman for the Kölnische Zeitung in order to write and illustrate reports for the spa supplement “Die Reise”. Around 1930/31 he dedicated the abstract oil painting "The tennis player" to Hetty Schuler. In 1932 he joined group 32 with Heinrich Maria Davringhausen , Peter Hecker , Heinrich Hoerle, Anton Räderscheidt and Franz W. Seiwert , which had to disband after the power was brought to the Nazis . In 1934 he moved with his wife to Munich, where he worked as a cartoonist for the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost and the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten until 1945 . Although politically more left-wing, Esser joined the NSDAP because he saw no career opportunities for himself without this step.

Between 1936 and 1938 the caricature "Hitler as a Wolf" was created. In 1937 three of his works (two watercolors, one graphic) were confiscated and destroyed in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum as part of the Nazi campaign Degenerate Art .

In the years 1943 to 1947 he created numerous of his landscape watercolors and ink drawings, while between 1945 and 1950, as part of the reconstruction, he created a series of glass window designs that were formally reduced for cost reasons. Three of them were made in the Franz Mayer'schen Hofkunstanstalt in Munich. In his denazification process , he was banned from working as a cartoonist for three years by the Munich-Land ruling chamber on May 11, 1948 . But from 1949 to 1964 he was again working as a caricaturist for the Nürnberger Nachrichten . At the same time he dealt with abstract oil painting to a limited extent. From 1958 drafts for book illustrations moved into the foreground of his work.

Esser died at the age of 73 in Seefeld am Pilsensee and was buried in Graefelfing .

Oeuvre

Between 1908 and 1964 Franz Esser was continuously active as a painter or caricaturist. His works include watercolors , India ink , pencil, colored pencil and charcoal drawings , lithographs , woodcuts , etchings , oil paintings , drafts of stained glass windows (3 of which were executed), caricatures and illustrations of travelogues and children's books.

Preferred subjects were landscapes, portraits , self-portraits (18 known so far), nudes, animal studies, still lifes , abstract compositions as well as religious and political subjects.

The graphic collection of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne has six works by Franz Joseph Esser, two of his caricatures are kept in the Karikatür Müzesi (= Caricature Museum ) in Istanbul and five of his graphic works are in the Unkel city archive . All other works are in private hands.

Exhibitions

  • 1921 - Unkel am Rhein: Sales exhibition in the Hotel Schulz with more than 259 exhibits
  • 1926 - Cologne: Group exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein
  • 1927 - Constantinople: Solo exhibition in Teutonia , 50 exhibits
  • 1927 - Cologne: Solo exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein
  • 1928 - Jena : Double exhibition together with Werner Burri at the Kunstverein Jena, February 12 to March 11, 1928, watercolors from Constantinople
  • 1928 - Cologne: Joint exhibition "Cologne Art 1928", Kölnischer Kunstverein, 2 exhibits
  • 1928 - Paris: Solo exhibition in the “Fermé la Nuit” gallery, Quai de l'Horloge, October 3-27, 1928, 34 exhibits, catalog
  • 1929 - Cologne: Joint exhibition "Deutscher Künstlerbund 1929", State House, May - September 1929, 1 exhibit, catalog
  • 1929 - Cologne: Exhibition together with Adolf Schleicher in the art salon Dr. Becker & Newman
  • 1929 - Berlin: Jury-free art show Berlin, more than four exhibits, catalog
  • 1930 - Cologne: Participation in the "Exhibition of Cologne Artists 1930" at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, 2 exhibits, catalog
  • 1930 - Berlin: Participation in the "Free Art Show"
  • 1931 - Cologne: Joint exhibition together with Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Franz W. Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle at the Kölnischer Kunstverein
  • 1932 - Düsseldorf : Düsseldorf-Munich art exhibition in the Kunstpalast, May 14 to August 31, 1932, 1 exhibit
  • 1949 - Unkel am Rhein: Solo exhibition at Villa Hattingen, approx. 170 exhibits, mainly watercolors
  • 1994 - Munich: Solo exhibition "Franz Esser - The Cologne Progressive Years", Galerie B. Dürr, March 17 to April 29, 1994, catalog
  • 1995 - Nuremberg : Participation in the exhibition "Zero Hour - Art After '45", Galerie B. Dürr, Hallplatz 2, August 11th to September 16th, 1995
  • 1996 - Istanbul: Participation in the exhibition "Alman Karikatürü Sergisi" in the "Karikatur Müzesi", April 4 to 30, 1996, 9 exhibits
  • 1999/2000 - Munich: Participation in the exhibition “Behaved! Forbidden! Forgot? ”, Galerie B. Dürr, December 3, 1999 to March 3, 2000, 2 exhibits
  • 2001 - Zwickau : Participation in the exhibition "German Graphics of the Twenties, Gruber Collection" in the "Galerie am Domhof", January 14 to March 4, 2001, 1 exhibit
  • 2002 - Munich: Participation in the exhibition "Open Art - Open Mind: My First Picture", Rathausgalerie, September 10-20, 2002, 1 exhibit
  • 2010 - Munich: Participation in the exhibition "The Lost Generation - A Selection", Galerie Bernd Dürr, September 10 to October 17, 2010, 3 exhibits
  • 2013 - Ingelheim am Rhein : Retrospective Franz Joseph Esser (1891–1964) , Rathausgalerie in the New Town Hall, February 4 to March 1, 2013, 78 exhibits

literature

  • Galerie Bernd Dürr, Ed .: Franz Esser. The Cologne "Progressive Years" , exhibition catalog, Cologne 1993, Munich 1993 and 1994
  • Wolfgang Sauré: Franz Esser . In: Weltkunst . Volume 64, 1994, p. 825.
  • Christoph Wilhelmi: Groups of Artists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 1900 , Ernst Hauswedell & Co., Stuttgart 1996. ISBN 3-7762-0400-1 , pp. 155–156, 208–209.
  • Franz Martin Esser: The group "Kölner Progressive" and their artistic environment (1920-1933) , VDG Weimar 2008. ISBN 978-3-89739-584-8 .
  • Franz Martin Esser: Franz Joseph Esser. Life and Work , Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8288-2881-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The life data of Franz Joseph Esser . From: franzesser.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  2. ^ Portrait of Hetty Schuler , pencil on yellow drawing paper, 42.1 x 33 cm, 1926, signed lower left "Ess 26" . From: franzesser.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  3. ^ Portraits of Hetty Schuler. In: Franz Martin Esser: Franz Joseph Esser. Life and work . Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2012, pp. 87, 101, 129–130.
  4. ↑ The tennis player, with dedication "Hetty" . Oil over pencil on laid paper with watermark "MBM (FRANCE), Ingres d'Arches", approx. 63 × 48 cm, around 1930/31. From: franzesser.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  5. ↑ Franz Joseph Esser (1891–1964) . From: tectum-verlag.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  6. ↑ big Magazin, No. 98, 5 (2017), Bickendorfer Interest Group e. V. (Ed.), Cologne, p. 30.
  7. ↑ Hitler as a wolf . Pencil on tracing paper. 21.1 × 29.9 cm, around 1936–38.
  8. ↑ Harry Fischer List . In: Database Degenerate Art. From: fu-berlin.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  9. ↑ Franz Joseph Esser (German, 1891–1964) (1). From: artnet.com, accessed July 15, 2017
  10. ↑ Franz Joseph Esser (German, 1891–1964) (2). From: artnet.com, accessed July 15, 2017
  11. ^ Works by Franz Joseph Esser . On. franzesser.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  12. ↑ Esser, Franz Joseph . From: lempertz.com/de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  13. ↑ Franz Joseph Esser (1981–1964) . From: invaluable.co.uk, accessed July 15, 2017
  14. ↑ Turkish Post , Constantinople, Volume 2, No. 177, June 29, 1927, p. 3.
  15. ↑ Kölner Lokalanzeiger No. 253, September 13, 1927, p. 3.
  16. ↑ Cologne Week, 3rd year, September 17, 1927.
  17. ↑ Kölner Tageblatt, Vol. 65, No. 453, Morgenausg., September 27, 1927, p. 3.
  18. ^ Franz Joseph Esser - Exhibitions . From: franzesser.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Esser, Franz Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, watercolourist, caricaturist, draftsman, illustrator and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1964
Place of death Seefeld , Upper Bavaria