Gottfried Brockmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gottfried Brockmann (born November 19, 1903 in Cologne ; † July 9, 1983 in Kiel ) was a socially critical artist, cultural advisor for the city of Kiel, and professor for "Free and Applied Painting" at the Muthesius-Werkschule in Kiel.

life and work

Gottfried Brockmann was born on November 19, 1903 in Cologne-Lindenthal as the son of an academically trained decorative painter.

The older generations of the family shaped the young Brockmann. He spent a lot of time in his father's studio and read art magazines such as the conservative “ German Art and Decoration ” and “Jugend” . A second place to stay was his grandmother's tailor's room, as evidenced by the later motifs of sewing machine and tailor's dummy that appear in his pictures. His grandfathers in turn taught him manual techniques. The maternal grandfather was a master painter and the father's drafted architecture in the Flemish Baroque style . Another important figure was his uncle, an art historian, who explained the furnishings and architecture of the Rhenish churches to him. Brockmann grew up in a conservative, middle-class environment that was characterized on the one hand by values ​​of craftsmanship and on the other by an academic and art-historical education.

When Gottfried Brockmann wanted to embark on a free artistic career after elementary school and secondary school, his father refused him this wish, and so it happened that he completed a two-year architecture apprenticeship (1920–1921). This was followed by a practical apprenticeship as a decorative painter , which Brockmann completed in 1922 with the journeyman's examination. During this time Brockmann began the first free artistic work, which was influenced by Dada and currents striving for plasticity.

From 1923 to 1925 Gottfried Brockmann kept in close contact with the “Rhenish Group of Progressive Artists” (especially Franz Seiwert , Heinrich Hoerle and August Sander ), and his pursuit of public art was formulated politically and socially.

In 1926 he decided to study "Free and Applied Graphics" with Wilhelm Herberholz , Ernst Aufseeser and Werner Heuser at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . His goal was a later artistic teaching profession. In 1928 Brockmann became a master student of Heinrich Campendonk , moved into a studio in the Hungerturm , and at the same time became chairman of the general student committee of his academy. At that time he also called himself Gotfried Waldemar Brockmann - under this name he participated in the 1929 annual exhibition of the German Association of Artists in the Cologne State House at the Rheinpark with two works. At that time he devoted his artistic work to studio interiors that reflect his inner seclusion, later so-called teaching panels, in which fundamental formal problems between two-dimensional and three-dimensional representation are thematized.

Brockmann finished his studies in 1932 and married the sculptor Marianne Reunert . The couple went on their honeymoon to the Baltic coast ( Darß , Hiddensee , Rügen ). Numerous drawings have survived from this trip and are now in the Ahrenshoop Art Museum .

At the academy, Brockmann was in charge of the basic training for the students, he was given the prospect of becoming a teacher at a later date, and in the building opposite the art academy, Eiskellerberg 1/3 , he was repeatedly given a studio, at the same time as Werner Heuser in 1932 posed.

Brockmann was chairman of the “ Rhenish Secession ”, which emerged from the “Young Rhineland” artists' association, among other things , and joined the Communist Party in response to the burgeoning National Socialism . After the seizure of power in 1933, anti-Semitic smear campaigns in the form of leaflets and door graffiti were carried out in the Düsseldorf Academy , and director Walter Kaesbach was removed from his office. He was to be replaced by a National Socialist painter named Sickmeyer. Gottfried Brockmann resisted and spoke out against the replacement, whereupon he was visited and threatened by an SA command.

Brockmann was no longer safe in Düsseldorf, so he and his wife went into hiding with his in-laws in Berlin. In 1934 he then worked for a year in Professor Thol's workshop in the class for “Monument Preservation and Monumental Art”. Brockmann's work during the Nazi era from 1933 to 1943 was characterized by handicrafts , and so small illustrative works, self-portraits, decorative paintings, historicizing pictures, animal pictures, still lifes, a series called “Zeitbühne” and a series on the subject of Effi Briest were created . Brockmann served in the army from 1943 to 1945, after which he was taken prisoner by the Americans from 1945 to 1946.

In the period from 1946 to 1952 he ran a book printing and lithographic company in trust in Hof an der Saale , gave private art lessons and built a “union of intellectual and cultural workers”. He also resumed his free artistic activity and was thus listed in the catalog of the “Fichtelgebirgs Art Exhibition” from 1949 as a member of the “ Group of Progressives 1948 ”. The initiation of the group is said to go back to Brockmann. Other members were Werner Gilles , Heinz A. Meyer , Caspar Walter Rauh and Gottfried Wiegand .

In 1952 Brockmann moved to Kiel to become cultural advisor through the mediation of Mayor Andreas Gayk . From 1955 he took over the "teaching post for nature studies and painting" at the Muthesius-Werkschule and later headed the "Free and Applied Painting" department. In 1975 he was awarded the honorary professorship of the State of Schleswig-Holstein “in recognition of the significant overall works that the artist has created in over five decades” .

Gottfried Brockmann died on July 9, 1983 at the age of 79.

Since 1985 the city of Kiel has awarded the Gottfried Brockmann Prize named after him, endowed with 5000 euros, every two years for the promotion of visual artists .

literature

  • Isabel Sellheim (Ed.): Gottfried Brockmann. Pomeranian landscapes by the sea. Exhibition from the collections of the Pommersches Landesmuseum Greifswald, art collection of the state capital Kiel. Collection of the Stadtgalerie Kiel . Muzeum Pomorza Środkowego, Słupsk 2008, ISBN 83-89329-41-7 (in German and Polish).
  • Joachim Kruse: Gottfried Brockmann . Schleswig-Holstein newspaper publisher, Schleswig 1970.
  • Joachim Kruse: Pomeranian Diary. 1932 - 1942. Pictures from the Baltic coast. Drawings, watercolors, gouaches by Gottfried Brockmann . Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1986, ISBN 3-529-06503-X .
  • Knut Nievers, Gernot Thiele (ed.): Gottfried Brockmann. Image and timelessness . Hatje-Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 1995, ISBN 3-7757-0599-6 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name, Stadtgalerie Kiel, December 16, 1995 to March 3, 1996).
  • Kulturamt and Stadtgalerie Kiel (ed.): Gottfried Brockmann Prize 2007 . Kiel 2007.
  • Gernot Thiele: Gottfried Brockmann. The factory until 1933 . Master's thesis, FU Berlin 1984.
  • Gernot Thiele: Only pictures can understand pictures . Berlin 1996.
  • Gernot Thiele (Ed.): "... on the question of a generally binding statement by art". Strategies, programs and ideas in Gottfried Brockmann's work . Dissertation, University of Kiel 2003 (2 volumes).
  • Brockmann, Gottfried , in: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. First volume (AD) , EA Seemann, Leipzig 1999 (study edition). ISBN 3-363-00730-2 (p. 319)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gottfried Brockmann , on RKD
  2. ↑ Gottfried Blockmann, Biographische Daten, 1928 , in Artists of the Remmert and Barth Gallery, Düsseldorf
  3. ↑ s. Catalog Deutscher Künstlerbund Cologne 1929. May – September 1929 in the State House , M. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1929. (p. 15: Brockmann, Gotfrid Waldemar, Düsseldorf : cat . No. 43: interior rudimentary ; no. 44: musical rudiment )
  4. ^ Eiskellerberg 1/3 (E. Erben Tapken), Becker, Fritz, Prof., architect. Ateliers of the art academy: Blockmann, Gottfried, Waldemar, painter; Heuser, Werner, Professor , in address book for Düsseldorf, 1932, p. 88
  5. ↑ Honorary title "Professor" . In: schleswig-holstein.de . Archived from the original on March 22, 2015. Retrieved October 16, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Brockmann, Gottfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brockmann, Gotfried Waldemar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German socially critical artist and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1983
Place of death Kiel