Franz Witte

Franz Witte (* 1927 in Düsseldorf ; † February 12, 1971 there ) was a German painter.

Life

Witte was born in Düsseldorf as a young man, after training as a window dresser , around 1948 Otto Pankok's master class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . In the early 1950s, Witte was at the height of his career as a painter, worked emotionally, not intellectually, and created numerous pictures and drawings.

Around the mid-1950s, Witte changed his style, began to paint in an intellectual- abstract way and lost his spontaneity as a painter. When his painting style was compared with Picasso's and some personal strokes of fate, he destroyed most of his works in 1953 in a fit of anger and depression. He lost his footing and began to drink, and success and recognition waned. "Witte was a very sensitive person and incredibly talented and, like so many starving artists of those years, he was an unbelievable swallowing woodpecker," is how the gallery owner Hans-Jürgen Niepel described him with a bookstore on Grabenstrasse. His friend Günter Grass, who supported his former student colleague Witte financially from Berlin, was unable to save him from alcohol or the madhouse . In The Tin Drum , Grass cast Franz Witte with the figure of Gottfried von Vittlar . And while Grass became world-famous with his book in 1959, Witte wandered through Düsseldorf's old town or worked as a night watchman. Later he even started a dispute with the author, because he felt himself and one of his works in some passages of the book as ingloriously depicted.

At the Csikós on Andreasstrasse in the old town , the people of Düsseldorf came together at that time and Günter Grass played there in the jazz combo or stood at the door as a porter. In the “Tin Drum Picture” by Witte and Germán Becerra (1957/1958) she showed the slightly crazy society in “Csikós” and portrayed the main artists, including Grass. The order for this picture was decided during a celebration. The landlord wanted his regular guests to paint. Witte and Becerra accommodated 55 people, 35 of them artists, in this group picture. In 2009 the picture was acquired for the collection of the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf.

The art dealer Friedrich Huppertz persuaded Witte to paint again in the 1960s. Oil paintings, drawings and gouaches date from this time. Huppertz and Klaus Lehmann, the then deputy head of the cultural office and inventor of the book shopping on the Kö , remember: “It was a sunken, almost colorless world of images in black and white and light blue. The motifs revealed a bleak human situation. ”At that time, the gallery owner Huppertz was still expecting a comeback Witte, who painted and drew a lot again and also had sales successes. But Witte could not really get on his feet and repeatedly volunteered to go to the Grafenberg Clinic . The last time Witte appeared on the night of February 9, 1971 with a head injury in the Rheinisches Landeskrankenhaus , fell into a coma a short time later, from which he no longer woke. The Düsseldorf artist died at the age of only 43. On the cemetery Eller the coffin friends, colleagues and old town restaurateurs followed. Grass delivered the eulogy.

In 1988 the film The Large Tin Drum Picture was made . The painter Franz Witte and his friends produced by HR and broadcast in 1988 and 1989.

Exhibition (selection)

1967: Galerie Mode & Art, Düsseldorf
2013: clock tower , Düsseldorf

literature

Günter Grass, called after Franz Witte, in: ders., Vonne Endlichkait. Göttingen 2015. p. 97.

Web links

Franz Witte , on Artnet, accessed on August 4, 2015a

Individual evidence

↑ Tin drum picture: Grass is wearing a plate hat (2nd right from above)
↑ Huppertz, Galerie Mode & Art, Hohe Strasse (Düsseldorf)
↑ Pictures by an almost forgotten artist, Franz Witte , on RP online from April 12, 2013, accessed on August 4, 2015
^ Artist film: The painter Franz Witte died in 1971 under unexplained circumstances. A group picture of his circle of friends, to which the writer Günter Grass belonged, hangs in a Düsseldorf bar. The film calls to mind the painter.

personal data
SURNAME	Witte, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter
DATE OF BIRTH	1927
PLACE OF BIRTH	Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH	February 12, 1971
Place of death	Dusseldorf

[1] Tin drum picture: Grass is wearing a plate hat (2nd right from above)

[2] Huppertz, Galerie Mode & Art, Hohe Strasse (Düsseldorf)

[3] Pictures by an almost forgotten artist, Franz Witte , on RP online from April 12, 2013, accessed on August 4, 2015

[4] Artist film: The painter Franz Witte died in 1971 under unexplained circumstances. A group picture of his circle of friends, to which the writer Günter Grass belonged, hangs in a Düsseldorf bar. The film calls to mind the painter.