Hans Martin Freyer
Hans Martin Freyer (born November 6, 1909 in Hanover , † August 25, 1975 in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm ) was a German painter , designer and commercial artist .
Education and professional career
Hans Martin Freyer spent his youth in Darmstadt and later studied architecture at the Technical University there until his pre-exam. In 1933 a year abroad followed. a. in the Balkans, Italy, France and Switzerland. After returning to Germany, he studied at the University of Fine Arts and the Reimann School in Berlin . From 1937 to 1938 he worked as an architect for exterior and interior design in the USA, where he also worked as a set designer.
Activities before and during World War II
Draft of the Volkswagen logo
Back in Germany in 1938, he designed the Volkswagen logo together with the engineer Franz Xaver Reimspieß . In 1937 he designed the first Volkswagen logo, which was distinguished by the V on the W. It was with a circle in the shape of a gear to the through-joy combined - ideology referred surrounded. Martin Freyer continued to develop this emblem in 1938 and thus created today's VW logo, which from now on has only been modified slightly. In the same year he received a design award for it. His Volkswagen logo retained the two letters V and W arranged on top of one another. A white circle with the same line width surrounds the letters in the style of New Objectivity .
Freyer went to the Reimann School in Berlin and later to the academy there. From 1939 he worked as a freelance set designer in Berlin .
During the Second World War, Freyer worked as an art designer for stage productions for opera houses, cabaret stages and variety shows, including the Berlin variety Scala , the cabaret of comedians and the New Playhouse in Königsberg.
In between he also carried out work in the painting hall of the Bayreuth Festival .
This was followed by activities as a commercial artist and industrial designer for surface decorations and structures, designs for wallpapers ( wallpaper factory Rasch ), textiles, decorative fabrics and light metal as well as title pages for records.
This was followed by another one-year stay in America, residing in New York and working in the USA, Canada and Mexico. After the end of the Second World War, Freyer opened a portrait studio in Wiesbaden in 1945. During this time he created the “Phoenix bird” that adorns the “Questum” administration building, formerly the tax office , at Mainzer Straße 35 in Wiesbaden .
Hilden time
In July 1947, the Hilden district began setting up three workshops in the skylight halls of the spinning mill of the Paul-Spindler-Werke textile company on Klotzstrasse in Hilden. In 1949 Martin Freyer became a teacher at the associated private school together with Hans Peter Feddersen . Until the closure of this facility in 1953, he took over a "commercial graphics department", which was founded in 1947 by Walther Bergmann (1914–1979) and was supplemented by the collaboration of the photographer Curt Bieling .
The aim of Martin Freyer's work was to loosen up previously sober structures. The task was to enliven the empty area in a manner appropriate to the material, in full harmony with the building and its architectural structure. The design of Freyer's form elements allowed a diverse, variable application, from drapery ornament to grain, from filigree relief to large-scale abstract patterns. The structure ornaments work in the light.
From Martin Freyer comes a. a. an ornamental mural and a glass picture in the former Albert Schweitzer School in Hilden. The mural 4.80 × 3.60 is composed of twelve wall elements. Thick wallpaper is stuck on it. Freyer painted and sprayed the repeating ornaments in several layers with a combined paint technique.
In 1963 Freyer carried out designs for relief concrete blocks for interior and exterior design.
Freyer created the “aluminum headquarters”, a circle penetrated by an A, and the “Spindler emblem” of Paul-Spindler Textilwerke, a warp with a horizontal “S” as a weft and surrounded by the words “Vom Pulp to spindle cloth ".
Designer at Rosenthal
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From 1964 to 1974 he worked as a freelancer at the Rosenthal porcelain factory, creating relief decor designs for glass and porcelain vases from the later reissued “studio-line” with “white vases”, “black vases” and “glass structures”.
The pleated vase he created in 1968 (shape 13027) in white and black onion shape became famous. Rosenthal later reissued this as part of the “50 studio-line” series. From 1968 pleated vases belonged to Rosenthal's structures series, whose philosophy was to let surfaces become décor and only let them work through their materiality, which made it possible to dispense with any color. The vase appears as if it were made of fine pleated fabric, which is flowing and gently rising and gently enveloping the stems of the flowers.
Other objects designed by Freyer were Bisque, Relief, OP-Art, Mid-Century and Trio of Kaiser vases, as well as porcelain candle holders and decorative plates made of bisque porcelain.
From 1970 to 1971 he also carried out television decorations and stage sets for the Berlin cabaret " Die Stachelschweine ".
Exhibitions
- Martin Freyer: Hilden, New York; Free work in innovative technology, surface decorations and structures, three-dimensional elements took place in the Städtische Galerie Schloss Oberhausen , Oberhausen from January 14th to February 11th, 1962; and then in the German Blade Museum , Solingen , from February 25 to April 8, 1962.
- Rosenthal, Hundred Years of Porcelain ; took place in the Museum August Kestner , Hanover from April 29 to June 13, 1982 and afterwards in the Focke-Museum , Bremen , from June 20 to August 15, 1982.
Private life
On November 17, 1941, Freyer married Gertraud Auguste Martha Nachtigall and lived with her in Berlin. His first marriage was divorced in 1958. During his time in Hilden, Freyer married Lena Maaike Cornelia Michel on April 3, 1958 (born January 15, 1921 in Kiel; † October 5, 1960 in Duisburg). During his time at Hildener Baukreis, Freyer lived in Hilden at Klotzstrasse 22 and later at Klotzstrasse 16 in Hilden until the early 1970s. In his third marriage on August 15, 1969, he married the graphic designer Johanna Margarete Ahrberg, b. Rühle.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hamburgische Landesbank (ed.): The building group. Workshop community and school for all arts (1943–1953). Exhibition from March 7, 2003 to July 4, 2003
- ^ CV of Martin Freyer with his membership in "Der Baukreis"
- ↑ Martin Freyer's curriculum vitae with Rosenthal vases
- ↑ Städtische Galerie Schloß Oberhausen, inventory list of works of art, serial no. No. 239. Inventory No. 388-TSB88
- ↑ Catalog of the Kestner Museum Hannover “100 Years of Rosenthal” from 1982
- ↑ VW logo ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ VW logo by Martin Freyer and Franz Xaver Reimspieß
- ↑ Design elements of the VW logo
- ↑ a b Rheinische Post from September 2, 1967
- ^ "Phoenix bird in Wiesbaden"
- ↑ Jens Scholz: Der Baukreis, Hamburg - Hilden - St. Peter, 1946–1953, contours of an artists' association of the post-war period , In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History (ZVHG), Volume 77, 1991 , p. 192 f., INIIST 25105149 , ISSN 0083-5587
- ^ Erwin Krupp, Ornaments from Tomorrow, samples from the Martin Freyer studio ; Novum Nutzgraphik, international monthly magazine for communication design. Verlag Bruckmann, Munich 1965 ID: 121685-5
- ↑ a b Hildener Zeitung (HZ) edition of December 24, 1959; Ornamental image in the new school building in the south of town Description of the twelve-part work that was created in Freyer's studio in the Spindler building on Klotzstrasse.
- ↑ White era ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Exhibition in 1962 in Oberhausen and Solingen ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Helga and Bernd Fritz: Rosenthal, Hundert Jahre Porzellan , Kestner Museum Hannover, exhibition April 29 to June 13, 1982, Union Verlag Stuttgart, ISBN 3-8139-5605-9
- ^ Documents and address book from the city archive of Hilden
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Freyer, Hans Martin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter, designer and commercial artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 6, 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hanover |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 25, 1975 |
| Place of death | Pfaffenhofen on the Ilm |