Franz Schömbs
Franz Schömbs (born May 29, 1909 in Mannheim , † April 10, 1976 in Munich ) was a German painter , film producer and at times chemist . As a representative of West German post-war film, he was an unusual figure: a painter as a filmmaker, a link between the film avant-garde of the Weimar period and the experimental short film scene in the late 1960s.
Life
Franz Schömbs was born in Mannheim on May 29, 1909. He was the second child of the businessman Franz sen. and Berta, b. Wagner, a trained actress . He has an older sister Eleonore, a younger brother Bernhard and a younger sister Rosemarie. When he was two years old, the family moved to Neustadt in the Palatinate. Here he attended school. After graduating from high school, he studied at the Karlsruhe Art Academy , the master school for graphics in Kaiserslautern. He is also doing an internship with a photographer. During his studies and afterwards he traveled repeatedly to Italy and France. Around 1929 when he was around 20 he made his first attempts to paint abstractly ( constructivist painting ) and dealt with color as the essence of pictorial representation. A more intensive preoccupation with the theoretical and aesthetic problems of color took place in 1934. He was particularly interested in the teaching of Wilhelm Ostwald . At this time over 100 pictures in the format 25 × 30 cm were created, in which only three of the four chromatic and achromatic colors were used. In addition, he started attempts to develop a color photographic process with the four colors yellow, red, blue and green in order to obtain an equal valence. Musical exercises with a violin were soon given up. In addition, he began to be interested in dance and choreography. In 1936 the family moved back to Mannheim to the Luisenring. From then on he described himself as a painter and chemist who wanted to develop photography further. He dealt intensively with the problem of space. With the idea of the unity of space and time, he began to paint “series pictures” in 1937: When the viewer walks past the pictures, the impression of movement, of the course of time, should be evoked.
His studio burned down during an air raid in 1943 . For the first time, painterly designs for the “Birth of Light” were created. Five years later he moved into a studio in Mannheim Castle . When he married Anneliese Wurster that year, he moved to a studio in the Mannheim observatory . His daughter Beate was born in the same year. In 1948/49 Schömbs developed the first recordings for "Opuscula" with the help of a 16-millimeter camera from strip images and stencils. Painted strips were moved with a crank, mixed by a mirror and then filmed with a camera. In the same year Schömbs founded the Mannheimer Quadrat artist group together with other artists .
In 1950 his second daughter, Cornelia, was born. The so-called "Inbild" was presented to the public around 1955 in Mannheim Palace. Originally planned as a sphere, it could only be realized as a cylinder 2 meters high and 5 meters in diameter. The viewer can walk around in this cylinder and look at an endless picture 16 meters long. In the same year Schömbs was given the opportunity to realize his film ideas: Hans Carl Opfermann and Walter Koch (Unda Film, Munich) had the idea for the film Maya , which was supposed to give an overview of avant-garde film making in Germany. “The birth of light” should be part of it.
In 1957 the family moved to Munich . The film The Birth of Light was made that same year. He also became a lecturer at the German Institute for Film and Television (DIFF) and worked there until its dissolution in 1958. On February 28, 1958, Maya premiered . This short film, however, received poor reviews. The Birth of Light was shown as a cultural supporting film . The film received the rating “Particularly valuable” from the film evaluation office, but was hardly understood by the cinema audience at the time and was completely rejected. When it was performed again about ten years later, the Birth of Light was received with enthusiasm and received a standing ovation. In 1962 Den Einsamen allen - a dance study on color, space and time - premiered. This film received the rating “valuable”, but was hardly ever shown. The Institut Internationes of the Foreign Office in Bonn bought the dance film and showed it in 50 copies at the representations of the FRG all over the world. Schömbs developed the idea of a new spatiotemporal reality under the term "Ergonics" (from Ergon = reality and Ikon = image). Following the BAUHAUS exhibition in Stuttgart in 1968, Schömbs was commissioned to film the Triadic Ballet from Oskar Schlemmer . Schömbs designed the pictures for the decoration and the recordings. In the 1970s, concepts ("Origines", "Transition") arose with the idea of combining 3-dimensional spatial images and 2-dimensional surface images. Schömbs begins with the preliminary work on an opera Ergon I . The last major exhibition took place in 1970 on the premises of the Professional Association of Visual Artists in the Völkerkunde Museum in Munich. Franz Schömbs died on April 10, 1976 at the age of 66 in Munich.
Catalog of works
photos
In so far as the pictures are not in private ownership, they were given to the “Mannheim Artists' Legacies Foundation”.
The so-called "Abstract Altar", which was created in the early 1950s, now hangs in the St. Konrad Church in Mannheim and is open to the public.
Movies
- 1948/49: Opuscula, 16 mm, color
- 1956/57: Birth of light, 35 mm, color, music: Marc Roland
- 1962: Den Einsame allen, 35 mm, b / w, chrome-plated afterwards, script: Peter Roleff
- 1963: Energetics (flames), 35 mm, b / w uncut, experiment
- 1963: Dynamograms, 35 mm, B / W, experiment
- 1965: Lichtspiele, 35 mm, B / W, trial
- 1970: The Triadic Ballet, Choreography: Oskar Schlemmer, Direction: Franz Schömbs, Margaret Hastings, Georg Verden.
All films are in the archive of the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
Exhibitions
- 1947: Kunsthalle Mannheim
- 1949: Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe
- 1951: Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe
- 1953: Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe
- 1953: Galerie Ahlers, Mannheim
- 1956: Galerie Probst, Mannheim (image)
- 1956: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne
- 1974: Ethnographic Museum Munich (complete works)
- 1976: Atelier exhibition in Munich
Group exhibitions
- 1951: Mannheimer Quadrat, Kunsthalle Mannheim
- 1952: Mannheim Square, Mannheim Palace
Lectures
- 1954: University of Heidelberg
- 1955: Bötcherstrasse, Bremen
- 1956: Augsburg Art Association
- 1956: Städel, Frankfurt
- 1962: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne
- 1965: Institut Internationes, Bonn
- 1969: International TV workshop ORF3, Vienna
- 1957 to 1958: Lecturer at the German Institute for Film and Television (DIFF), Munich
Web links
- Franz Schömbs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Franz Schömbs at the estate foundation for Mannheim artists
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schömbs, Franz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter, film producer and chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 29, 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mannheim |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 10, 1976 |
| Place of death | Munich |