Gunter Böhmer

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Gunter Böhmer: "Self-Portrait" 1978 (India ink drawing)

Gunter Böhmer (born April 13, 1911 in Dresden , † January 8, 1986 in Montagnola , Ticino , Switzerland ) was a German-Swiss painter , draftsman and book illustrator , who also accompanied his work as a writer.

Gunter Boehmer's work shows a wide range of styles . Although he mainly devoted himself to drawing and left behind thousands of drawings, drafts and sketches , as well as a number of paintings , various portraits and numerous watercolors , he was best known to the public through his many sensitive book illustrations . Fritz Löffler , who has been involved in the Dresden art collections for many years, counts Gunter Böhmer to the very great illustrators of the 20th century like Otto Dix and illustrators like Josef Hegenbarth .

Life

education

After graduating from high school in 1930, Gunter Böhmer began studying painting and graphics at the Dresden Academy , where he was accepted without an examination. At the same time he studied German at the Dresden University. He then studied from 1931 to 1933 at the Berlin Art Academy with Emil Orlik and Hans Meid , where he also met Max Slevogt , and lived in the music circle around the composer Justus Hermann Wetzel .

Artistic creation

Gunter Böhmer: Casa Camuzzi (pencil drawing)
Gunter Böhmer: "My mother" 1972 (pencil drawing)
Gunter Böhmer: " Nightmare " 1979 (ink drawing)
Gunter Böhmer: "Threat" 1980 (watercolor)
Gunter Böhmer: "Circus scene" 1981 (India ink drawing)
Plate of the urn grave of Gunter Böhmer in the cemetery of San Abbondio, Gentilino ( Switzerland )

In 1933 Böhmer accepted Hermann Hesse's invitation to Montagnola ( Ticino ) and took up residence in Casa Camuzzi , which was to remain his main residence until his death. Hesse introduced Böhmer to the publisher Samuel Fischer , and Böhmer received the order for the first book illustrations for the S. Fischer Verlag . After this beginning, Böhmer illustrated no less than 133 works of world literature, including a. by Hesse, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Goethe, Büchner, Dostojewski, Stendhal, Flaubert, Musil, Kafka or Robert Walser.

From 1934 to 1936 Böhmer stayed in Italy again and again , for example in Rome , Arezzo , Florence , Venice and Verona . He worked with Giovanni Mardersteig from the well-known Officia Bodoni in Verona and took part in the Venice Biennale in 1936 . In 1936 he also studied in Paris , where Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso moved him the most. In the same year he traveled to Rouen to prepare the illustrations for Gustave Flaubert's novel " Madame Bovary ". In 1938 he lived for some time as an employee of Editions Albatros in Paris. In 1939 the painters Karl Hofer and Louis Moilliet and the cultural historian and diplomat Wilhelm Hausenstein visited him in Montagnola. In addition to Hermann Hesse, his circle of friends now included the Swiss doctor and writer Max Picard , Emmy Ball-Hennings ( Hugo Ball's widow ) and the well-known tapestry weaver Maria Geroe-Tobler. Böhmer stayed in Switzerland during the Second World War.

In 1945 he married the tapestry weaver Ursula Bächler from St. Gallen , a daughter of the prehistorian Emil Bächler . In 1949 he went on a study trip to Ospedaletti (Italy) with the painter Hans Purrmann . In 1950 he met the painter Werner Gilles on Ischia . In 1951 he received the citizenship of Montagnola. In the same year Leopold Zahn wrote in the magazine Das Artwork : "The extensive facsimile edition of his drawings and watercolors, which was organized by the 'Olten Book Friends' as the 'Diary of a Painter', suggests the great extent of his extraordinary talent". In 1952 he visited Raoul Dufy in his Parisian studio Impasse Guelma, and in 1953 he spent another long stay in Paris. From 1957 onwards, Böhmer stayed more often in Germany, where his works were exhibited more and more often. Böhmer was inspired by the drawing art of Joseph Hegenbarth in the book illustration .

Artistic and educational work

In the winter semester 1960/61, Gunter Böhmer was appointed to the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and took over the management of the class for free graphics and illustration as the successor to Karl Rössing, who left the company prematurely . In 1961 he was appointed professor. He shaped not only artistically but also through his person in a sustainable way students of his subject through the intensity of his way of working:

“Young people have to look for and find a model for themselves. But that's nothing static: Mission statements have to change with your own development process. You have to deal with the current model again and again, look for other models, otherwise you stop. "

Böhmer saw his artistic work as being central to life themes, which he structured primarily in dual pairs of terms:

  • Opposites: sensual pleasure - asceticism and love of nature - mental coldness
  • Approaches: sociability - isolation
  • Connectedness: melancholy, melancholy - cheerfulness, humor
  • Human: People - things; People - nature; People - heaven ; The theme of space approximates the latter .
  • Day - night and twilight
  • Angels - demons

He viewed the art business and his own artistic and educational work with the decisiveness and clarity that characterized it:

"The question of the model is always a question of one's own conscience: Anyone who confirms one's own egocentricity is certainly a wrong model."

Gunter Böhmer trained freelance artists as well as future art teachers, and his class was one of the most frequented at the Stuttgart Academy. The artists who studied with him include a .: Bernhard Rebmann, Dietrich Klinge , Brigitte Pfaffenberger , Horst Peter Schlotter , Klaus Waschk .

Awards

When he left the Stuttgart Art Academy in 1976, Gunter Böhmer received the Baden-Württemberg Medal of Merit . In 1980 Böhmer was guest of honor at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome. In the same year he received the Hermann Hesse Medal from the city of Calw and was made an honorary member of the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. In 1981 the German President awarded him the " Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1st Class". In 1982 Böhmer received the Semper Medal from the Dresden State Art Collection .

Works

Gunter Boehmer's work is divided into

  • Free drawings, watercolors and oil paintings: "... all of my work has a biographical character." (Gunter Böhmer)
  • Book graphics (illustrations): Böhmer has illustrated around 150 books (many of them from world literature) and created covers and bindings for many hundreds of publications.
  • Prints, including bookplates, in a wide variety of techniques
  • Drawing books: “My painter's diaries and night-time books contain the answers to inner and outer worlds and arise as I breathe; an organic necessity, so no choosing and making decisions - an instinct for life. "(Gunter Böhmer)
  • Written works, partly as independent books, partly as contributions to essay collections, etc.

Foundations and donations

Gunter Böhmer has made a number of foundations and made major donations of his works to museums and other institutions. I.a. are this

estate

The estate of Gunter Böhmer is in the Gunter-Böhmer-Archiv Calw and in the Fondazione Ursula & Gunter Böhmer, Gentilino (Ticino, Switzerland).

Fonts

  • A summer in Paris. Aldus Manutius Verlag, Zurich and Stuttgart 1959, without ISBN
  • Written. Association of Olten Book Friends, Olten 1961, without ISBN
  • à propos free graphics . In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 5 / Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart / For the period from November 1, 1973 - March 31, 1974 / Ed. Rector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1974. Fig. Pp. 21–24 [ Text facsimile]
  • Gunter Böhmer, Hermann Hesse: Documents of a friendship. Compilation: Ursula Böhmer, Heiko Rogge, Gerd Sieber, ed. Große Kreisstadt Calw 1987, ISBN 3-926802-00-6 .
  • The diary of Gunter Böhmer - Purrmanniana (for the exhibition "The diary of Gunter Böhmer - Purrmanniana", Museum Langenargen on Lake Constance), publisher: Eduard Hindelang , Thorbecke-Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-7995-3168-8 .

literature

  • Gunter Böhmer - 1911 Dresden - 1986 Montagnola. Memorial exhibition for the 80th birthday. Ed .: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, catalog 100. Grafenau 1991, ISBN 3-89298-060-8 .
  • Gunter Böhmer Foundation Calw, City of Calw (ed.): Fascinated by light and color. Gunter Böhmer as a painter. Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in the Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz (10.9. – 20.11.2011). Constance, 2011.
  • Helmut Herbst (Ed.): Gunter Böhmer - Oil Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings. Edition Hugo Matthaes, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-87516-517-9 .
  • Kai Hohenfeld: Gunter Böhmer (1911–1986) - The black spider , in: The dark side of the moon. Shadows from art and literature (publications by the Art Museum Albstadt, No. 181/2019), text by Kai Hohenfeld, exhib.-cat. Kunstmuseum Albstadt 2019/20, pp. 20-25
  • Wolfgang Kermer : Gunter Böhmer on his 65th birthday on April 13, 1976 . In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 7 / Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart / For the period April 1, 1975 - May 31, 1976. Stuttgart 1976. pp. 40–42.
  • Wolfgang Kermer: Gunter Böhmer at the Stuttgart Art Academy . Cantz, Stuttgart / Bern / Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-922608-47-7 . [Selection presentation of the "Academy Drawings" by Gunter Böhmer in the collection of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.]
  • Wolfgang Kermer: Memory of Gunter Böhmer: on the 10th anniversary of the academy's death on January 8, 1996 . Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, 1996 (= WerkstattReihe , edited by Wolfgang Kermer; 2) [With four dedication drawings and a letter from Gunter Boehmers to the author in facsimile.]
  • Wolfgang Kermer (Ed.): Between book art and book design: book designer at the academy and former arts and crafts school in Stuttgart; Work examples and texts. [To the exhibition "Between book art and book design, book designer of the academy and former arts and crafts school in Stuttgart", on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart after the Second World War, Württemberg State Library Stuttgart, October 30th - 23rd November 1996]. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1996, ISBN 3-89322-893-4 . Pp. 26-27, 132-133, 174-175. [Detailed biography with catalog raisonné]
  • Wolfgang Kermer: Address for the opening of the exhibition "Class Gunter Böhmer" on June 25, 1976 . In: Ders .: "1968" and academy reform: from the student unrest to the reorganization of the Stuttgart academy in the 1970s. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-89322-446-7 . Pp. 56-57. ( Contributions to the history of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart ; 9)
  • Peter Mieg and Hans A. Halbey: Gunter Böhmer. Tschudy, St. Gallen 1963.
  • Donation Wolfgang Kermer: inventory catalog . Edited by the Städtische Galerie Neunkirchen, Neunkirchen 2011 ISBN 978-3-941715-07-3 .
  • Juergen Seuss and Ansgar Walk (editors): Salute, GB! The risk of the uncomfortable - memories of Gunter Böhmer (1911–1986). BrennGlas, Assenheim 1986, ISBN 3-924243-18-2 .
  • Stuttgart encounters: the Wolfgang Kermer donation. Städtische Galerie Neunkirchen, May 18 - June 24, 2005. Ed .: Neunkircher Kulturgesellschaft gGmbH; Nicole Nix-Hauck. Catalog: Wolfgang Kermer.
  • Ansgar Walk: Gunter Böhmer, seen through the eyes of a friend and collector. Pendragon, Bielefeld 1998, ISBN 3-929096-67-6 .
  • Hans Walter: Gunter Böhmer as an illustrator . Stultifera Navis (newsletter of the Swiss Bibliophile Society), 1946, without ISBN.

Web links

Commons : Gunter Böhmer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiversity: Illustrations by Gunter Böhmer on Thomas Mann  - course materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Böhmer received Swiss citizenship = citizenship in 1951
  2. ↑ see web link Gunter Böhmer illustrates world literature. (Katrin Nitzschke)
  3. ^ LZ: Gunter Böhmer . In: The artwork, 5th year, 1951, issue 6, pp. 42–43 m. Fig., Also cover picture.
  4. ^ Lothar Lang: Painting and Graphics in the GDR. Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig, 1983; P. 305
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Kermer : Data and images on the history of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart . Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1988 (= improved reprint from: Die Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart: a self-portrayal . Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1988), o. P. [12]
  6. ↑ Quote Böhmer in: Walk: Gunter Böhmer - With the eyes of a friend… . 1998, p. 68
  7. ↑ cf. Böhmer's diary entry in: Walk: Gunter Böhmer - With the eyes of a friend… . 1998, pp. 68/69
  8. ↑ Quote Böhmer in: Walk: Gunter Böhmer - With the eyes of a friend… . 1998, p. 71
personal data
SURNAME Böhmer, Gunter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss painter, draftsman and book illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1986
Place of death Montagnola , Ticino , Switzerland