Gerhart Kraaz

Gerhart Kraaz (born May 22, 1909 in Berlin ; † August 26, 1971 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German painter , graphic artist and illustrator .

life and work

Gerhart Kraaz was born the sixth of seven children. His mother was Lucie Kraaz, b. Schröter, the father of the architect Johannes Kraaz . After the father died at the age of forty-four, the youngest sons Gerhart and Wolfgang ended up in the wealthy Jewish orphanage Moshe-Stift, where they attended school without attaining secondary school leaving certificate.

Gerhart began to paint and make small-format drypoint stitches. His first painting was made in 1922, a small oil study of seven-year-old Eva reading. Between 1925 and 1929 Kraaz attended the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg . His teachers were Ludwig Bartning , Ferdinand Spiegel and, for the wood engraving, Oskar Bangemann . The works known from these years, including an etching, two wood engravings and a painting, reflect the traditional and handcrafted approach to teaching. Through the intercession of one of his professors, Kraaz was able to attend free courses at the Prussian Academy of the Arts , where he a. a. learned from Max Liebermann .

In 1929 he married Ruth Brandis. In the same year both began to manage the “Kiek Över” farm near Zingst on the Darß peninsula . While Kraaz took over the agricultural duties, his wife ran a guest house for holiday guests. Reproductions of pen drawings document part of the artistic activity from this period: farmhouses and landscape motifs.

In 1931 the couple took over the remote "Unkenhof" near Reulbach (Rhön Mountains) for four years , where in 1934 their son Albrecht was born.

Artistic creation

From 1933, as a member of the “Association of Fulda Artists”, he had the opportunity to take part in exhibitions in Fulda in the Künstlerheim am Steinweg with his landscape paintings, drawings and drypoint engravings . After a Rhön sketch was awarded in a competition advertised by the “ Fuldaer Zeitung ” in 1933, a selection of fine, z. Pen-and-ink drawings, some of which are supplemented by verses, are included in the exhibition "Works of Local Artists" in the public library of the State Library.

In the same year graphics by Kraaz were shown together with drawings and watercolors by the Würzburg artist Theo Dreher in a double exhibition in the Würzburg Otto Richter Hall. After the Leipzig Art Association , the Berlin art scene reacted to the meticulous landscape drawings. Both in the 1937 exhibition "Graphics and Small Sculpture" in the "House of Art" and in that of the " Association of Berlin Artists " in 1938 Kraaz was represented above average with five and six works respectively.

In private, his daughter Christiane was born between 1936 and 1938 and he separated from his wife Ruth. Shortly thereafter, a call to Berlin must have been made, because from 1940 Kraaz was head of the graphic cabinet at the Association of Berlin Artists (VBK) there. In 1940 he received his first illustration assignment. For a horticultural book by Gert von Natzmer, Kraaz created a good forty lifelike plant drawings.

The precision and traditionality of Kraaz's engravings prompted the city of Potsdam to commission ten freely chosen views of Potsdam (2 were realized), as well as landscape watercolors for the programs of the “Potsdamer Musiktage” in 1941 .

After the birth of their first son, Sylvester in 1941, the second son Anselm was born here two years later. The motif of the numerous watercolors of these years was mainly the lake and the surrounding landscape, which Kraaz perceived as a "wondrous, quiet, sweeping and boundlessly dreaming land". It was obviously they who persuaded the “ Organization Todt ” to grant the artist a four-week Norway grant in 1943 , with which Kraaz was officially sent as a war correspondent, but which unofficially enabled him to go on a study trip which, in his own opinion, “had been preparing for a long time Awakening ”and initiated a productive creative phase. The last known works of these years include the Norway watercolors, some of which made up Kraaz's entire contribution to the Munich art exhibition in 1944 and others later adorned the color plates of a company calendar.

In the spring of 1945 Kraatz moved by truck to the Upper Franconian Main area, to a refugee quarter in Lettenreuth.

Kraaz, who had completed the paintings for a three-winged altar in the chapel of Görau (Modschiedel parish, Weismain parish) and was working on a second altar for the chapel of the nearby Loffeld (Staffelstein parish), saw these orders as his field of activity for the future. Altar painting, extensive nature studies, portraits, the acceptance of students and handicraft designs were part of this “program”.

The earliest known allegories by Kraaz such as “The poor and the rich” and “The dancer on thin ice” were created in Frankfurt in 1949, whose socially critical worldview reflects a deep resignation.

Finally, in the 1950s, the artist gradually turned to illustration as his main area of ​​responsibility through an order from the Gutenberg Book Guild . Then Kraaz also became a member of the social democratic "WipoG" and from 1953 to 1965 illustrator of their bi-monthly "Open World". Around 1950 Kraaz moved to Bad Homburg vor der Höhe .

The increasing number of incoming orders for book illustrations from 1956 onwards also included drawings based on literary models and encouraged Kraaz to do two private prints in 1958: Together with the typographer and graphic artist Max Waibel , he gave Plato's " Allegory of the Cave " with three illustrations and Holderlin's poem Patmos with a drawing in the smallest edition. The two prints in octave format were included in the 1957 exhibition “German Book Illustration of the Present” immediately after their publication. The following year Kraaz took part in the US touring exhibition "Modern German Book Design" with two illustrated books. After the 1959 edition of Andersen's fairy tales with 243 water-colored drawings , which was printed in six editions within four years, the 230 chalk drawings for Cervantes ' " Don Quixote " published in 1961 were a first major work.

The apartment in Bad Homburg's Parkstrasse remained the artist's residence and studio for the next ten years.

The drafts for the folder “ Canticum Canticorum. Das Hohe Lied ”, the first large-scale bibliophile work of the books illustrated by Kraaz. Gotthard de Beauclair, born in 1907, was responsible for the furnishings . Since 1928 as a book designer and typographer responsible for the appearance and reputation of the products of the Insel-Verlag , since 1951 also as head of the Frankfurt Trajanus-Presse , in 1962 he founded his own edition “Ars libri” in Frankfurt. In its first year of existence, “ Das Hohe Lied ” appeared here with thirty lithographs by Kraaz, which in the same year was voted one of the most beautiful books of the year by the Association of German Book Artists as part of its annual award. With the Song of Songs, Kraaz began the close collaboration and friendship with the committed printer Paul Robert Wilk, which continued until his death.

After the Hohenlied, two books, also with original lithographs, were published in 1963, Hausmann : "Bremen" and Boccaccio : " Decamerone ". For illustrations of 1964 at Rütten & Loening released " Faust " Output Kraaz was again of Gotthard de Beauclair used, and in turn evolved from a collaboration of Kraaz and de Beauclair one of the most successful books in terms of the combination of text and image. In the same year the Frankfurt Goethe Museum showed 123 preliminary stages and final versions of Kraaz's illustrations for " Faust " in a solo exhibition .

The group of unpublished works includes drawings on the Old and New Testament. In 1966, motifs from ancient authors such as Homer were increasingly added.

In 1965, a characteristic mixed technique of pen, dry and semi-dry brush came to the fore. In the illustration, Kraaz often went beyond the visualization of the moments described in the text and instead chose freely associated motifs that always matched the font and their intellectual environment. The years after 1965 were increasingly successful commercially. From 1967 onwards, regular articles for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , including above all the drawings for the series “German Landscapes”, published in 1972 by the editor in charge, Nikolas Benckiser , brought Kraaz closer to a broad audience. Solo exhibitions such as those of the Offenbacher Klingspor Museum , the Marburg Institute for Church Construction and Church Art of the Present, the Ulmer Kunstverein and the German-Italian Association in Frankfurt formed the prelude to a whole series of exhibitions in the years 1969 to 1973. The most extensive and The most important of them was that of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz , which showed drawings, book graphics and lithographs from March to May 1970.

On August 26, 1971, Kraaz died of a heart attack while at work.

Illustrated books and portfolios (selection)

A total of 63 books with illustrations appeared in different editions. The following is a selection of the most important works:

• Pedro de Alarcón: The tricorn. Erich Hoffmann Verlag, Heidenheim 1965.
• Hans Christian Andersen: The most beautiful fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Sigbert Mohn Verlag, Gütersloh 1959.
• Stefan Andres: El Greco paints the Grand Inquisitor. Mohn & Co. GmbH (Bertelsmann Lesering), Gütersloh 1958.
• Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron. Private printing and Ludwig & Mayer, Frankfurt am Main 1963.
• Canticle Canticorum. The Song of Songs. Ars Libri Verlag Gotthard de Beauclair, Frankfurt am Main 1962.
• Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: life and deeds of the astute noble Don Quixote of La Mancha. Rütten & Loening, Hamburg 1961.
• Charles Dickens: David Copperfield. Verlag der Freizeit-Bibliothek, Hamburg 1961.
• Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Christo. Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1957.
• Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers. Mohn & Co., Gütersloh 1961.
• Alexandre Dumas: Twenty years after. Mosaik-Verlag, Hamburg 1963.
• Alexandre Dumas: The Queen's Necklace. Mohn & Co., Gütersloh o. J.
• Howard Fast: The Final Frontier. Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust. Rütten & Loening, Munich 1964.
• Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen: The biography of the arch fraudster and country troublemaker Courasche. Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt-Vienna-Zurich 1970.
• Hermann Hesse: The glass bead game. Max Waibel and Ludwig & Mayer type foundry, Frankfurt am Main 1959.
• The Book of Job. Paul Robert Wilk, Seulberg 1971.
• Johannes von Tepl: The tiller and death. Maximilian Dietrich-Verlag, Memmingen 1965.
• Gottfried Keller: All the short stories. Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1965.
• Johann Jacobus Klant: The somewhat strange and quite adventurous human life of the former Kasper Jan Klaassen. Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1958.
• Plato: The allegory of the cave. Type foundry Ludwig & Mayer, Frankfurt am Main 1958.
• Stendhal: Master novels. Carl Schünemann Verlag, Bremen 1969.
• Adalbert Stifter: Colorful stones. Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main 1951.
• Leo Tolstoy: happiness of marriage. Novel. Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1957.

Literature (selection)

• Hans A. Halbey: Drawings and illustrations by Gerhart Kraaz. Klingspor Museum, Offenbach 1967.
• Birgit Löffler: Gerhart Kraaz. 1909-1971. A draftsman in dialogue with literature. Edition Curt Visel, Memmingen 1998, ISBN 3-922406-83-1 .
• Helmut Presser: Gerhart Kraaz. Drawings, book graphics, lithographs. Gutenberg Museum, Mainz 1970.
• Wolfgang Tiessen: The book illustration in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 1945. Vol. I-VI. Bookstore Wolfgang Tiessen, Neu-Isenburg 1968–1989.
• Günther Vogt: Gerhart Kraaz, confrontations. Drawings on world literature. Herzog August Library, Marburg 1968.
• Hans Fronius and Gerhart Kraaz. Two book illustrators of the XX. Century. Exhibition catalog of the Herzog August Library No. 34, Wolfenbüttel 1982.

Working in public collections

• Free Deutsches Hochstift - Frankfurt Goethe Museum, Frankfurt
• Art collection of the University of Göttingen
• Gutenberg Museum, Mainz
• State Library, Munich
• Klingspor Museum, Offenbach
• Duke August Library , Wolfenbüttel
• Municipal Gallery, Würzburg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See WipoG
2. ↑ Birgit Löffler: Gerhart Kraaz. 1909-1971. A draftsman in dialogue with literature. Edition Curt Visel, Memmingen 1998, ISBN 3-922406-83-1 .