Gertrud Eberz-Alber

Gertrud Eberz-Alber (born May 26, 1879 in Münsingen , † January 2, 1955 in Stuttgart ) was a German painter and wife of the painter Josef Eberz (1880–1942).

education

Paula Gertrud Alber was born as the daughter of the pharmacist August Alber and his wife Friderike, geb. Blumhardt born. She spent her childhood in Cannstatt, her artistic talent was encouraged by her parents. Even though studying art was by no means a matter of course for women , she could still attend the Kgl. Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1908 (?) To begin studying painting. Before that, in 1893, she had joined the Württemberg painters' association that had just been founded in Stuttgart . The association was founded due to the fact that the academy had set up its own women's painting school in 1892, which did not cover the full program. She received her first training in the association to which she belonged until 1931, after which her parents agreed to join the academy. She worked for the genre painter Gustav Igler (1842–1938). In 1910, besides Gertrud Alber, only Luise Deicher (1891–1973) and Käthe Loewenthal were registered. That changed when Adolf Hölzel took over the ladies' painting school. The important painter and gifted pedagogue brought this institution, like the entire academy, of which he was director from 1916 to 1918, to a high reputation despite numerous hostilities. The number of women rose to 16, Gertrud Alber became the first master class student. So she had her own studio and was able to work independently.

A group of pupils formed around Hölzel, the “Hölzelkreis”. It included the master class students, including Josef Eberz, whom she would later marry. She was not represented at the first exhibition “Hölzel and his circle” in Freiburg in 1916, but in later exhibitions and the congratulatory folder “Adolf Hölzel from his students”, which was put together in 1923 for the professor's 70th birthday. In the meantime, the exhibition of the Association of Art Friends in the Lands on the Rhine in Stuttgart in 1914 showed a “still life” (oil painting) in the “ Expressionist Room”, which Hölzel had put together as “Young’s Contribution”.

Life as a painter

From 1914/15 she worked as a freelance artist in Stuttgart. In 1915 she joined the “Frauenkunstverband”, which was founded in Frankfurt in 1913 with Käthe Kollwitz as chairwoman. At the first exhibition in 1915 in the rooms of the "Württembergischer Kunstverein", "... the peculiar talents of Lily Hildebrand, Gertrud Alber and Luise Deicher ..." were particularly emphasized. When Josef Eberz was invited to Wiesbaden by the Wiesbaden art collector Heinrich Kirchhoff in 1917 to paint in his garden, she followed him. They married there on May 5, 1917. After their time in Wiesbaden, they moved to Munich in 1918, where they rented an apartment with a studio, but she also kept her studio in Stuttgart. In Munich she was also taken over by the gallery owner and publisher Hans Goltz , who had been representing her husband since 1914. Her works, especially watercolors , were bought by private collectors, but also by public institutions. After the war and the turmoil after the war, Josef Eberz was active in artists' committees during the Soviet Republic , and the couple moved to the south. In 1920 they stayed in Assisi and the surrounding countryside for a year . Here she perfected her watercolor technique. The trips to the south, in addition to Italy and Yugoslavia, were repeated until 1924, but Paris was also visited. The trips south had one more consequence. Gertrud Eberz-Alber, who grew up as a Protestant, converted to Catholicism in Bologna in 1928 .

The first publications about her appeared in magazines, even in Hans Hildebrandt's book "Die Frau als Künstlerin" (1928).

During the time of National Socialism she was not considered to be “ degenerate ” like her husband , but the possibilities and exhibition activities were severely restricted. Josef Eberz was able to keep himself afloat with church commissions , but the pressures were great. Both he and her had health problems. Osteoarthritis that developed very quickly and led to almost complete paralysis forced her to go to a nursing home, but she still tried to continue working. When her husband suddenly died in the middle of the war in 1942, the problems increased. The bombing raids on Stuttgart and Munich threatened them and their belongings directly. Her attempts to secure and save her husband's work and her own can be read from an exchange of letters with Hans Denninger, the managing director of the “German Society for Christian Art”. Despite a few helpers, only a small part of her husband's works and a portfolio of her own watercolors could be saved. The apartment with studio in Munich and the own studio in Stuttgart were destroyed. She pursued further recognition of her husband's work with great tenacity in the first post-war period. This was already represented in 1947 at the first exhibition of the “German Society for Christian Art” in the New Collection in Munich , and in 1953 there was the large “Josef Eberz Memorial Exhibition” of the same society. She did nothing for her own work that can be explained by her helpless situation in the Mörike retirement home in Stuttgart. She died there on January 2, 1955.

plant

Most of their work was lost in the bombing of Stuttgart and Munich. Her works, oil paintings - mostly portraits - as well as landscape and still life watercolors can be found in private ownership, but also in some public collections. The rescued portfolio with its watercolors came to the Limburg / Lahn municipal art collections with the remaining estate of Josef Eberz. Some of the sheets were presented to the public in an exhibition with a catalog in 2000, but earlier and later individual sheets were also presented in collective exhibitions.

literature

• Hans Hildebrandt: The woman as an artist . Berlin 1928
• Mela Escherich: Gertrud Eberz - A painting woman of modern times . In: The beautiful woman, 5th year, 1930, issue 2
• Hölzel and his circle - Stuttgart's contribution to 20th century painting . Exhibition catalog Württ. Kunstverein Stuttgart, 1961
• Josef Eberz - painting. Graphics. Mosaics. Stained glass window; Gertrud Erberz-Alber - watercolors . Exhibition leaflet. Professional Association of Visual Artists Munich eV 1967
• Adolf Hölzel from his students - A congratulatory folder 1923 . Exhibition catalog Gallery of the City of Stuttgart, 1978
• Edith Neumann: Artists in Württemberg - On the history of the Württemberg painters' association and the Federation of Women Artists of Württemberg . Stuttgart, 1999
• Franz Josef Hamm / Irene Rörig: Gertrud Eberz-Alber - watercolors . Exhibition catalog for the art collections of the city of Limburg an der Lahn, 2000.

Web link

• biography

Individual evidence

1. ^ Exhibition catalog Art Exhibition Stuttgart 1914 , Kgl. Art building, Schloßplatz, May to October, ed. from the Association of Art Friends in the States on the Rhine, Stuttgart 1914, p. 49, cat. 424.

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