Fred Jacobson

Fred Jacobson (born January 31, 1922 in Tallinn ; † February 4, 2013 in Hanover ) was a German draftsman, graphic artist and painter.

Life

Fred Jacobson was born on January 31, 1922 in the Estonian capital Tallinn (formerly Reval). He grew up trilingual (German, Russian, Estonian). In 1939 Jacobson took his secondary school diploma at the age of 17 at the Revaler Deutsche Oberrealschule, then the family, like most Baltic Germans , had to leave Tallinn and first came to Posen / Warthegau .

Jacobson was just 18 years old and was drafted into the German armed forces. From 1940 to 1945 he fought as a front soldier in Russia . The horrors of World War II are later reflected in his pictures. Towards the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the British in Austria . After his release, at the age of 23, he first went to Bad Staffelstein in Franconia and soon afterwards to Hanover .

From 1946 to 1947 Jacobson completed a traineeship as a commercial artist in Hanover . He then attended the Werkkunstschule Hannover in the class of Professor Erich Rhein (1902–1956) until 1949 . 1950 to 1955 he worked as a house graphic artist for the Hanover company Machwitz Kaffee . He then worked as a freelance commercial artist. From 1958 to 1972 he painted, among other things, large cinema posters and designed exhibition stands.

In addition to his regular professional activity, Jacobson trained artistically. In 1952 he met the painter Harald Schaub (1917–1991). He ran a private painting school in Hanover, where Jacobson took lessons from 1952 to 1957. Schaub taught him the basics of painting and drawing. Jacobson also took lessons from Erich Rhein again, this time as a private student, who encouraged him to experiment with different techniques and materials. In contrast to Schaub, Rhein advocated the principle of chance in art. At Rhein Jacobson met the Goslar painter Friedel Jenny Konitzer (1915–2013) and made her acquainted with Harald Schaub. The three artists had a lifelong friendship and they also exhibited together.

From 1963 Jacobson belonged to the professional association of visual artists (BBK) . In 1973 he finished all commissioned work and from then on worked as a freelance artist with his own studio, mainly in Hanover. Study trips took him all over Europe. Numerous landscapes were created on his travels.

Fred Jacobson died on February 4, 2013 in Hanover.

plant

Jacobson's free work comprises around 1,300 works and consists mainly of drawings, monotypes , watercolors, batiks and paintings. Jacobson worked figuratively, his subjects were people, nature and technology. The main materials he used were chalk, ink, pencil and oil. Little has been preserved of his commissioned work as a commercial artist.

In terms of motifs, Jacobson processed his traumatic war experiences in technically sophisticated monotypes in the 1960s by depicting battered bodies or twitching figures in dance-of-death dance- like rounds. During this time he also experimented with the technique of batik. In addition, quiet, deserted landscapes (e.g. from Ireland ) or cityscapes were created on his study trips , which impress with their continuous lines.

Jacobson worked in the great outdoors before the model. He made clear, reduced chalk pictures, delicate, detailed pen drawings and even depicting willow trees, which can almost be described as “tree portraits”. In the 1970s Jacobson painted so-called “scrap pictures”, in which the depiction of bent or rusted metals symbolizes how people deal with things that are considered superfluous. Women's nudes were another major theme in Jacobson's work that ran through his entire oeuvre.

Jacobson's style was initially strongly influenced by his two teachers, Schaub and Rhein. Schaub had taught him to abstract from the object (working on a model) and to reduce the representation to the elementary. Corrections were not allowed in class, but had to be started again if necessary. Again and again it was about precision and concentrating on the essentials. At Jacobson, this led to a confident, quick linework that was to become characteristic of his work. The lessons at Rhein, on the other hand, the experimentation with different materials and printmaking methods had encouraged Jacobson to be more independent. This gave him his own, unmistakable style. His batik pictures met with a positive response at exhibitions.

Fred Jacobson referred to himself primarily as a draftsman, his works as "autonomous drawings". “ The drawing served as a cipher for what he saw, experienced or felt. Its clear, strong character font: linear, light-dark-flat, hatched ”is unmistakable.

A large part of Fred Jacobson's life's work is now in a private collection near Hanover and in other private collections. In 2013 he received the audience award at the exhibition “Homage to Heinrich Vogeler ” in the artists' village of Worpswede . In 2014 he was awarded the Kunstverein Worpswede e. V. dedicate a solo exhibition.

Exhibitions (selection)

• Münster , Galerie Clasing 1967, 1968, 1971
• Salzgitter , Kunstverein (together with Friedel Jenny Konitzer) 1969
• Steinhude Freizeitzentrum: Die Drei (Harald Schaub, Friedel Jenny Konitzer, Fred Jacobson) 1972
• Bissendorf , Gallery Werkhof Bissendorf 1973, 1976
• Hanover , Upper Tax Office Lower Saxony, Fred Jacobson. Drawing - painting 2001
• Neustadt am Rübenberge , ALTREWA collection, drawings from six decades in 2007
• Neustadt am Rübenberge, Gallery B³ for contemporary art in the Leinepark: "Landscapes (t) dreams, views from the 20th and 21st centuries" (joint exhibition, including works by Harald Schaub , Friedel Jenny Konitzer , Bernd Otto Schiffering, Paul Smalian ) 2009
• Artist village Worpswede , exhibition Homage to Heinrich Vogeler 2013

literature

• ALTREWA Collection (Ed.): Fred Jacobson - Drawings from Six Decades , Neustadt am Rübenberge 2007.

Web links

• Pictures by Fred Jacobson and further information

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See ALTREWA Collection (ed.): Fred Jacobson - Drawings from Six Decades , Neustadt am Rübenberge 2007.
2. ↑ See Hermann Lober: Delicate balanced colors. Batik by Fred Jacobson in Münster's gallery B. Clasing , in: Münstersche Zeitung , November 1971; see. also Hilde Fehrmann: Fred Jacobson exhibits for the second time in Münster , in: Neue Hannoversche Presse , Friday, November 12th 1971, p. 14.
3. ↑ Quote from Jochen Borsdorf in the preface to the exhibition catalog Fred Jacobson - Drawings from Six Decades , Neustadt am Rübenberge 2007.
4. ↑ See Kunstverein Worpswede Audience Award of the Heinrich Vogeler Hommage , accessed on February 25, 2014.