Gustav Seitz

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Gustav Seitz (born September 11, 1906 in Mannheim-Neckarau , † October 26, 1969 in Hamburg ) was a German sculptor and draftsman.

Life

Käthe Kollwitz memorial (1960), 210 cm
Young resting Sappho (1965), 163 cm
Flensburg Venus (1963)
Memorial for the victims of fascism in Weißwasser

Gustav Seitz was born in 1906 in the Mannheim district of Neckarau as the son of a master cleaner and plasterer . He completed elementary school education from 1912 to 1921. From 1920 to 1922 Seitz was an apprentice in his father's plastering company. The first contact with visual arts came through visits to the Mannheim art gallery . From 1922 to 1924 Seitz received training as a stonemason and stone sculptor with the sculptor August Dursy in Ludwigshafen , where he passed the journeyman's examination to become a stonemason. At the same time he took drawing lessons at the Mannheim trade school.

Seitz then studied from 1924 to 1925 with Georg Schreyögg at the State Art School in Karlsruhe. From 1925 to 1932 he was with Ludwig Gies and Dietrich at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts (today Berlin University of the Arts ). From 1929 he was a master student of Wilhelm Gerstel . He made trips to France and Northern Italy. From 1933 to 1938 Seitz worked as a client in Hugo Lederer's studio at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. He traveled to Paris and Denmark. His work was hindered during the Nazi era. Seitz was a driver and clerk in the military during the Second World War from 1940 to 1945. In 1945 he became an American prisoner of war. In the same year Seitz used his own studio on Kantstrasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg, which he held until 1958. In 1946 Seitz received a teaching post for plastic design at the TU Berlin . In 1947 he became a professor of sculpture at the Charlottenburg University of Fine Arts.

In 1949 Seitz received the National Prize of the GDR III. Class for the memorial for the victims of fascism in Weißwasser / Oberlausitz . When he accepted the National Prize of the GDR during the Cold War and in 1950 became a founding member of the Akademie der Künste zu Berlin (East) , he was suspended from teaching at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg and banned from the house with immediate effect . The same thing happened to him four weeks later at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg. In 1950 he moved to the eastern part of Berlin. In 1951, Seitz headed a master's workshop for sculpture at the German Academy of the Arts and took a trip to China. In 1952 Seitz traveled to Paris, where he met Picasso. In the same year he traveled to Moscow and Leningrad. An appointment to the Werkakademie Kassel failed in 1953 because he did not want to give up teaching at the German Academy of the Arts in East Berlin. In 1954 Seitz stayed in Zurich for the portrait of Thomas Mann on behalf of the Akademie der Künste (East). In 1956 there were exhibitions on his 50th birthday in Mannheim and Bremen. A separate cabinet for sculptural works by Gustav Seitz was set up in the Nationalgalerie Berlin. In 1957 he was awarded the Cornelius Prize of the city of Düsseldorf.

In 1958 Seitz resigned from the East German Academy of the Arts . From 1958 he lived in Hamburg, where he succeeded Edwin Scharff (1887–1955) at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts as professor and head of a sculpture class. In 1959 Seitz traveled to Rome, Olevano and Tivoli. In 1960 he became a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg . In 1962 Seitz traveled to Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. He exhibited at documenta II (1959), documenta III (1964) in Kassel and at the Biennale di Venezia (1968) in Venice / Italy. In 1964 Seitz received the Great Lower Saxony Art Prize in Hanover, the Edwin Scharff Prize in Hamburg in 1965 and the Schiller plaque of the city of Mannheim in 1966.

Gustav Seitz was a member of the German Association of Artists and the artist group Der Kreis . From 1937 he worked with the architect Luise Seitz, b. Zauleck (1910–1988) married.

plant

Seitz's work is characterized by female nudes, portraits (including by Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Thomas and Heinrich Mann) and drawings, and occasionally also reliefs. He often varied the motif of the crouching woman. His endeavor was to create realistic plastic, some of which express humor. He has also written publications himself.

The artistic legacy of Gustav Seitz was transferred to a foundation in 1988 with a will from Luise Seitz, which has been keeping all works in the Gustav Seitz Museum - Center for Art and Cultural Education in Trebnitz (Müncheberg) since autumn 2017 .

  • Crouching (1927).
  • Washerwoman (1928).
  • Eva (1947).
  • Striding (1949) bronze, 165 cm
  • Kim-Ir Gu (1951)
  • Thomas Mann (1954), 40 cm
  • Female torso (1955) bronze, 20 cm
  • Käthe Kollwitz (1958), 215 cm
  • Standing Eva (1959), 165 cm, Asklepios Klinik Nord (Ochsenzoll), Hamburg-Langenhorn
  • Artist (1959/1960), Kunsthalle , Emden
  • Kneeling Negress (1961) bronze, 54 cm
  • Large Marina (1962) bronze, 148 × 138 cm
  • Flensburg Venus (1963) bronze, in the Mannheim Herzogenriedpark
  • Beaten Catcher (1963/1966) bronze, 198 cm
  • Young resting sappho, bronze (1964/1965)
  • Käthe Kollwitz (1965), bronze, 70 cm, Holitzberg 89, Hamburg-Langenhorn
  • Great Listeners (1968), bronze
  • Jungfrauenbrünnlein (1969) Bronze 20.5 × 33 × 33 cm

Publications

  • Creation of a sculpture . Berlin 1951.
  • Study sheets from China , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1953
  • A granite sculpture is created . Berlin 1954.
  • Sculptures and drawings . Dresden 1955.
  • Portrait sculpture in the 20th century . Wiesbaden 1958.
  • Sculptural drawings . Frankfurt am Main 1970.

Estate / appreciations

Seitz's written estate is in the German Art Archive in the Germanic National Museum . His widow left the Hamburg residential and studio building and its inventory to two art historians to establish the Gustav Seitz Foundation , which was located in this building from 1989 to 2017. Due to age-related structural defects, the two founders looked for suitable new premises, which they finally found in Müncheberg in Trebnitz Castle . On September 11, 2017, a sculpture museum was opened in the castle's former wash and slaughterhouse, which, in the spirit of the donors, makes Gustav Seitz's estate accessible to the public.

In Mannheim-Neuhermsheim a street is named after him, in Hamburg-Steilshoop the Gustav-Seitz-Weg.

Literature (selection)

  • Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945-1990 . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Fritz Nemitz: Young Sculptors. Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1939.
  • Eberhard Ruhmer : Gustav Seitz. In Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 3rd year 1949 / issue 3, p. 104
  • Emil Endres: Gustav Seitz. In Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 3rd year 1949 / issue 9, p. 285
  • Ursel Grohn : Gustav Seitz. The plastic work. Catalog raisonné . Hauswedell, Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-7762-0198-3 .
  • Heiner Hachmeister: Gustav Seitz - catchers and idols . Hachmeister, Münster 1990, ISBN 3-88829-080-5 .
  • Jens Kräubig: Investigations into the development of plastic form with Gustav Seitz . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1986, ISBN 3-8204-8397-7 .
  • Claus Pese: More than just art. The archive for fine arts in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Cultural history walks in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Volume 2, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, pp. 108-111.
  • Gustav Seitz Foundation, Hamburg: About love and pain. Sculpture and drawings . Dräger + Wullenweber, Lübeck 2006, ISBN 3-9801506-9-0 .
  • Joist Grolle : Gustav Seitz. A sculptor between East and West . Published by the Gustav Seitz Foundation. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8319-0401-3 .
  • Praise to folly. The sculptor Gustav Seitz. ed. by Thomas Sello. Verlag St. Gertrude, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-935855-15-8 .
  • Roland Heinzmann: Gustav Seitz on his 110th birthday. - In: Kurpfälzer Winzerfest-Anzeiger 2016, pp. 44 - 45; Red-st. Leon 2016 (Nussbaum Medien).
  • Roland Heinzmann: Gustav Seitz on the 50th anniversary of his death - Travel to France 1952: Diary I letters I drawings. - In: Kurpfälzer Winzerfest. Das Magazin zum Fest 2019, pp. 78 - 83; Red-st. Leon 2019 (Nussbaum Medien).
  • Roland Heinzmann: Taken from the depot - on the 50th anniversary of Gustav Seitz's death. - In. kunstraumMETROPOL 4/2019: 12 - 13; Freiburg i.Br. (art-media-edition-Verlag).
  • Seitz, Gustav . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 4 : Q-U . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1958, p. 257-258 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Gerkens u. a .: Gustav Seitz: Sculptures and hand drawings , exhibition catalog, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen 1976, p. 29.
  2. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Ordinary members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Seitz, Gustav ( memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on February 17, 2016)
  3. ^ Gustav Seitz Museum - life data. In: gustav-seitz-museum.de. Accessed January 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Object No. 22 in the Langenhorn Archive
  5. ↑ The estate of the sculptor Gustav Seitz. Neues Deutschland from September 5, 2017, p. 12

Web links

Commons : Gustav Seitz  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Seitz, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Neckarau near Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1969
Place of death Hamburg