Franz Wilhelm Seiwert

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FW Seiwert: “Creatures”, around 1917–1919

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert (born March 9, 1894 in Cologne ; † July 3, 1933 ibid) was a painter and sculptor , avant-garde and member of the "Cologne Progressives" .

Life

In 1901, at the age of seven, Seiwert was the victim of an X-ray experiment . Throughout his life he was marked by festering wounds and burns from the consequences of this radiation treatment, which was to determine his work and lead to his early death.

From 1910, Seiwert attended the Cologne School of Applied Arts (the later Kölner Werkschulen ) and then worked for an architect until the First World War . Around 1916 he came into contact with Expressionism through the couple Käthe Jatho-Zimmermann and Carl Oskar Jatho , whereupon he made his first Expressionist woodcuts . Seiwert's early work is determined by the expression of the suffering of the world. From this perspective, Christian motivated works were initially created. The Jathos published his cuts in two picture books.

He spent the years 1919 and 1920 in the Eifel village Simonskall , where many artists from Cologne had migrated after the war. A large Dada exhibition was still held in Cologne in 1919 . Seiwert got to know Max Ernst and was asked to take part in the exhibition. At the last minute he withdrew his works on the grounds that Dada was a "bourgeois art company".

In 1921 Seiwert returned to Cologne. There he became enthusiastic about Marxism , and from then on his works are shaped by the social misery of the workers in the Ruhr area, whereby his pictures became more and more abstract and he developed his own formal language.

FW Seiwert: Self-Portrait, 1928

Seiwert made the acquaintance of Heinrich Hoerle , Anton Räderscheidt and the photographer August Sander . Seiwert's cuts appeared in the magazine “ Der Sturm ” and the magazine “ Die Aktion ” published by the Berlin writer Franz Pfemfert . In the following decade, numerous exhibitions were held at the Kölnischer Kunstverein and various Cologne galleries. Exhibitions took the artist to Aachen, Düsseldorf and Barmen, visits and trips to Berlin and Paris.

A large collective exhibition in the Barmer Museum made Seiwert internationally known in 1928. The Detroit museum bought some of his works, and Seiwert met Moholy-Nagy . Starting in 1930, Seiwert received several large orders from the Cologne Museum of Decorative Arts. Around this time he also implemented his compositions as glass windows.

From 1929 the painter acted as editor of “a to z”, the organ of the “Group of Progressive Artists” , which he edited in February 1933 until the last edition in the early days of National Socialism .

Seiwert's art is in contrast to the National Socialists' conception of art . After the seizure of power , he therefore fled to the Siebengebirge, but had to return to Cologne for health reasons. Jewish friends brought the patient to the Israelite Hospital in Cologne , where he died on July 3, 1933 at the age of 39 after unsuccessful attempts at healing by the radiologist Walter Blank (1894–1943). His grave is in Cologne's North Cemetery , the gravestone is formed by Seiwert's reclining relief Kissing Couple (1929).

Works by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert can be seen today in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, but the vast majority of his works are in private collections.

In 1962, Franz-Seiwert-Strasse in Cologne-Müngersdorf was named after him.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1920: Group exhibition with the Cologne Artists Working Group

literature

  • Riccardo Bavaj : “Eliminate the existing world completely by force.” The artist Franz W. Seiwert and his fight against the Weimar state. In: Geschichte im Westen No. 22 (2007), pp. 41–65.
  • Joseph Gantner: Franz W. Seifert +. Neue Zürcher Zeitung of July 7, 1933, sheet 1239.
  • Carl Oskar Jatho: Franz Wilhelm Seiwert . (= Monographs on Rhenish-Westphalian contemporary art; Vol. 27). Publishing house Aurel Bongers, Recklinghausen 1964.
  • Uli Bohnen, Dirk Backes (Ed.): The step that was taken once is not taken back, Franz W. Seiwert, Schriften. Karin Kramer Verlag , Berlin, 1978.
  • Uli Bohnen: Franz W. Seiwert 1894–1933. Life and work. Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne 1978.
  • Seiwert, Franz Wilhelm . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Commons : Franz Wilhelm Seiwert  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans M. Schmidt , The Last Signature - Graves of German Artists of the 20th Century , Verlag Dr Kovač, Hamburg 2015, pp. 84/85.
  2. ^ Tomb Seiwert in the Find a Grave database . Accessed November 1, 2019.
  3. ^ Rüdiger Schünemann-Steffen: Cologne Street Names Lexicon , 3rd exp. Ed., Jörg-Rüshü-Selbstverlag, Cologne 2016/17, p. 247.
  4. ^ Historical Archives of the City of Cologne , accessed on October 5, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Seiwert, Franz Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1933
Place of death Cologne