Hans Purrmann

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Portrait of Hans Purrmann, oil, by Rudolf Levy , around 1913
Portrait stele Hans Purrmann, by Wieland Förster , 1980

Hans Marsilius Purrmann (born April 10, 1880 in Speyer ; † April 17, 1966 in Basel ) was a German painter , graphic artist , art writer and collector. He lived and worked in Munich , Paris , Berlin , Langenargen , Florence and Montagnola in Ticino. As a student and friend of Henri Matisse in Paris, Purrmann found his own painterly form, untouched by Expressionism . He created still lifes , nudes , portraits and mostly southern-light-filled landscape paintings . His work consists of almost 1400 oil paintings , over 400 watercolors , over 1200 drawings, numerous graphics and four sculptures . He was the husband of the painter Mathilde Vollmoeller-Purrmann .

Stations of his life

Speyer and Munich

After completing elementary school, Purrmann learned the painting trade in his father's business, which he did not, however, satisfy. Soon he attended the arts and crafts school in Karlsruhe ; from 1897 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . He received his first academic art education through his teacher Franz von Stuck . There he met Eugen von Kahler , Paul Klee , Wassily Kandinsky and Albert Weisgerber , among others . He had a warm friendship with the latter.

His younger brother Heinrich Christian (1881–1943) continued the respected parental painting business together with his wife Elisabeth Josefine Edle von Walck (1888–1969) and their son.

Paris

Albert Weisgerber, Hans Purrmann and Henri Matisse in Munich 1910

In 1905 Purrmann went to Berlin for six months , particularly attracted by Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt . At Liebermann's suggestion, he was accepted into the Berlin Secession ; henceforth the gallery owner Paul Cassirer represented his work. Despite these successes, he moved to Paris in 1906 , where he met his friend Weisgerber and Rudolf Levy in the Café du Dôme , but also made new friends, including Oskar and Margarethe Moll and the future Federal President Theodor Heuss . Purrmann belonged to the circle of "Domiers", so named after their regular Café du Dôme, grouped around the art patron Wilhelm Uhde .

Matisse and his students in the studio, 1909

In the house of Gertrude Stein he made the acquaintance of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse . With this he built up the “ Académie Matisse ”: Matisse as teacher, Purrmann as “massier” (chairman), responsible for organization and administration. Through Matisse, Purrmann received his final “formation” (training), he found his personal style, which reveals the suggestions of Matisse, Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir ; Until the end of his life he retained individual, characteristic traits in his works, even if he studied expressionism , cubism and abstract painting intensively and took note of them.

Berlin and Langenargen

At this point in Langenargen was the Purrmann House, in which he lived and worked from 1917 to 1935

After marrying the painter Mathilde Vollmoeller in 1912 and their honeymoon, the Purrmann family lived in Paris until 1914. The outbreak of the First World War forced her to return to Germany. From 1914 to 1916 they lived in the "Lower Castle" of the entrepreneur Robert Vollmoeller in Beilstein , after which they lived in Berlin until 1935. From 1921 they spent the summers in Langenargen on Lake Constance , where they bought a fisherman's house. Purrmann moved to Italy ; several trips took him there. The family lived in Rome from 1923 to 1928 and only spent the summer months on Lake Constance. During this time he created colorful, light-flooded landscape pictures.

After Hitler came to power , Purrmann's art was ostracized as "degenerate" because he was a "Frenchman".

Florence

In 1935 he attended Max Liebermann's funeral with some painter friends; while he was being monitored by the Gestapo . Purrmann had to flee Germany. Friends helped him to run the Villa Romana in Florence on a voluntary basis . This was possible because the Villa Romana was run by an association that was self-governing until the war and not yet synchronized . With the energetic help of his wife, Purrmann succeeded in turning the villa into an art center again, where numerous artists and art enthusiasts met who, like him , could not survive in National Socialist Germany, including Monika Mann , Kasimir Edschmid , Toni Stadler , Werner Gilles and Eduard Bargheer . Thanks to the help of the villa's board of directors (President was Carl Goerdeler ), Purrmann managed to maintain a free island of art in Florence. This was all the more astonishing when in 1937 Purrmann was one of the outlawed artists in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition . By then, 36 paintings by Purrmann had been confiscated from German museums. When Italy was occupied by the Germans after the fall of Mussolini in early autumn 1943 and Nazi persecutors appeared from Germany, the situation became difficult for Purrmann. After his friend Rudolf Levy had been deported, Purrmann fled to Switzerland with his wife Mathilde.

Switzerland - Montagnola

They moved to Castagnola. Purrmann's wife Mathilde died there after a long illness, and he fell into a deep creative crisis. In 1944, Purrmann found a new home nearby, in Montagnola / Ticino . He made friends with the poet Hermann Hesse , who later dedicated the poem “Old Painter in the Workshop” to him, as well as with the painter Gunter Böhmer , and soon found Geroe-Tobler (1895–1963 ) in the tapestry weaver Maria (“Mareili”) ), the aunt of Boehmer's wife Ursula, a new partner.

After Germany came Purrmann until 1950 and even temporarily back. His influence on the intellectual and artistic development of Germany in the post-war period was nevertheless considerable. Not only his numerous large exhibitions, but even more his membership in various newly founded artists' associations, such as the Palatinate Secession and the board of the German Association of Artists , of which he was a member of the jury for many years, testify to this . He benefited from the fact that he was not politically burdened. More important, however, was his incorruptible sense of quality: his judgment was appreciated by everyone, which is why he was able to mediate between the supporters of figurative and abstract painting in decisive meetings. It was thanks to his commitment that the Villa Romana came back into German ownership. Purrmann remained true to his own style to the end: the landscape paintings that were created in Montagnola and during his stays in Italy are characterized by great color and attest to careful composition. Purrmann died in 1966 and was buried in Langenargen on Lake Constance.

Mathilde Vollmoeller, painter and wife

In 1908 Purrmann met his future wife Mathilde Vollmoeller in Paris, who had a great influence on him. She came from a rich and respected family of textile industrialists in Stuttgart who were committed to the social issues of the time and were open to cultural developments. Her brother was the then well-known poet Karl Gustav Vollmoeller . She herself only found her way to painting after literary and musical attempts, inspired by Sabine Lepsius and Leo von König . As a young woman, she translated the novel “Love Letters from an English Girl” into German. In Berlin she had come to the George Circle through her teacher Sabine Lepsius ; It was there that she met the young Rainer Maria Rilke , whom she introduced to the work of Cézanne and with whom she later maintained a lively correspondence. In 1906 she went to Paris to establish a self-employed painter. She was able to successfully present her works in several exhibitions. She was respected among German and French artists for her language skills and her mediating nature. After marrying Purrmann in 1912, she devoted herself entirely to the service of her family. Like many other women in art , she subordinated her artistic work to that of her husband. Her work was rediscovered in 1999 and made known to the public through several exhibitions; The Purrmann House in Speyer shows a representative section in a permanent exhibition.

Purrmann as a collector

Hans Purrmann collected paintings, graphics, carpets and antiques all his life, including Henri Matisse's painting “Goldfisch” from 1911, which is now in MoMA New York. In 1963 his considerable collection of graphics, which mainly includes French artists, was exhibited in Kaiserslautern.

Own writings (selection)

All of Hans Purrmann's writings up to 1961 are collected in:

  • Göpel, Erhard and Barbara: Life and opinion of the painter Hans Purrmann. Wiesbaden 1961:
    • From the workshop of Henri Matisse (1922)
    • Van Gogh and Us (1928)
    • Sixty-year-old Max Slevogt (1929)
    • Henri Matisse (1930)
    • About Henri Matisse (1946)
    • Memories of my student days (1947)
    • The unity of the work of art (1949)
    • Change is the way of the arts (around 1950; revised 1958/59)
    • Memories of the painter Rudolf Levy (1951)
    • Art without an audience. Open letter to a Palatinate painter (1953)
    • Experiment via Cézanne (around 1958/59)
    • Landscapes and Still Life (1960)
    • The lost image of man (1961)

Catalog raisonnés

  • Angela Heilmann: Hans Purrmann: The graphic work. Complete directory . Eduard Hindelang Museum Langenargen, 1981.
  • Christian Lenz, Felix Billeter: Hans Purrmann. The paintings I: 1895–1934. / The paintings II: 1935–1966. Catalog raisonné. 2 volumes. Munich 2004.
  • Christian Lenz, Felix Billeter: Hans Purrmann. Catalog raisonné. Watercolors and gouaches. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2008.
  • Hans Purrmann. Hand drawings 1895–1966. Catalog raisonné. Edited by Felix Billeter and Pia Dornacher on behalf of the community of heirs after Dr. Robert Purrmann with the collaboration of Juliette Israël and Lisa Kern. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2014, ISBN 978-3-7757-3680-0 .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • Hans Purrmann, Paul Cassirer Gallery, Berlin 1918
  • Hans Purrmann, Trade Museum, Kaiserslautern 1927
  • Richard Seewald - Hans Purrmann, Art Museum, Lucerne a. a. 1950
  • documenta 1 , Kassel 1955
  • Hans Purrmann, House of Art, Munich a. a. 1962/63
  • Hans Purrmann: The graphic work, Palatinate Landesgewerbeanstalt, Kaiserslautern a. a. 1963
  • Hans Purrmann 1880–1966: paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich 1976/77
  • Hans Purrmann (1880–1966) on his 100th birthday, Museum Langenargen 1980
  • Hans Purrmann on his 100th birthday, Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum, Mainz 1980
  • Hans Purrmann: Painting - Graphics - Drawings - Sculpture, Academy of the Arts, Berlin (East) 1982
  • Hans Purrmann: Watercolors. Kunstverein, Speyer / Museum Langenargen 1986
  • The painter Hans Purrmann, Federal Chancellery Bonn a. a. 1987/1988
  • In the light of color. Hans Purrmann. Still life, nudes, interiors, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen 1995/1996
  • In the space of color. Hans Purrmann 1880–1966, Historisches Museum der Pfalz, Speyer 1996/1997
  • Hans Purrmann 1880–1966: Watercolors and selected canvases, Museum Lothar Fischer Neumarkt id OPf. 2005/2006
  • Hans Purrmann: “In the play of forces of colors”. Paintings - watercolors. Kunsthalle Tübingen u. a 2006
  • Hans Purrmann (1880–1966): The Magic of Southern Light, Art Forum of the Berliner Volksbank 2006/2007
  • Hans Purrmann. A master of color: paintings, writings and friendships, Museo d'Arte Mendrisio 2011
  • The Steins collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisien Avant-Garde, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art u. a. 2011/2012, p. 465, pl. 104-106
  • Hans Purrmann: Permanent exhibition in the Langenargen Museum
  • Purrmann and Expressionism , Buchheim Museum , Bernried am Starnberger See 2017

Honors

In his birthplace Speyer there is the Hans-Purrmann-Allee. There are other streets named after him in Frankenthal (Palatinate) , Haßloch , Neuhofen (Palatinate) , Schifferstadt , Kandel (Palatinate) , Beilstein (Württemberg) (in the West III development area) and in Langenargen .

Institutions

Hans Purrmann House, Speyer

The former parents' house of Hans Purrmann in Speyer, Kleine Greifengasse 14, was opened to the public in 1990 as a museum and memorial in honor of the painter. Purrmann's work is represented there with around 70 exhibits (paintings, prints, watercolors, sculptures). His extraordinary life - from a simple journeyman to a painter of international importance - is documented in showcases. A visit lets you experience the ambience of a craftsman's house from the middle of the last century. Since 2001, works by his wife, Mathilde Vollmoeller, have also been made accessible in a separate room. In changing cabinet exhibitions, there are also works by artists from Purrmann's circle of friends or later artists who have dealt with Purrmann.

Hans Purrmann Archive, Munich

The Hans Purrmann Archive has been in Munich since 2008 . There, the life and work of the artist are documented, large parts of the correspondence, photo and press material are collected and continuously updated. Information can be obtained here on questions of authenticity in relation to Purrmann's oeuvre or his life.

Hans-Purrmann-Gymnasium, Speyer

The Hans-Purrmann-Gymnasium has been located on Otto-Mayer-Straße in Speyer since 1967 . In 2000 the number of students at the HPG reached the mark of 1000. In the break hall there is a sculpture by Hans Purrmann.

Literature (selection)

  • Purrmann, Hans . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 27 : Piermaria – Ramsdell . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1933, p. 465-466 .
  • Felix Billeter, Eva Zimmermann (eds.): Hermann Hesse - Hans Purrmann: Letters 1945–1962. Berlin 2011.
  • Felix Billeter, Christoph Wagner (ed.): New ways to Hans Purrmann. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7861-2776-5 .
  • Gunter Böhmer : The diary of Gunter Böhmer - PURRMANIANA. Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-7995-3168-8 .
  • Lorenz Dittmann: Hans Purrmanns colored picture design. In: Cat. Speyer 1996/97, pp. 30-45.
  • Kurt Glaser: Hans Purrmann. In: Art and Artists. 16, 1918, pp. 453-464.
  • Edmund Hausen: The painter Hans Purrmann. Berlin 1950
  • Ostracized art. Visual artists of the internal and external emigration in the time of National Socialism . Edited by Werner Haftmann . With a contribution by Leopold Reidemeister and a preface by Helmut Kohl . Edited by Berthold Roland . DuMont, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-7701-1940-1 .
  • Angela Heilmann: Pictorial objects and pictorial presentations - comments on the choice of motifs by Hans Purrmann. In: Cat. Speyer 1990, pp. 11-23.
  • Hermann Hesse: Old painter in the workshop. Dedicated in friendship to Professor Hans Purrmann. In: The time . May 27, 1954, poem.
  • Gotthard Jedlicka: Hans Purrmann. In: Jahresring 60/61. Contributions to German literature and contemporary art 1960, pp. 55–65.
  • Clemens Jöckle : Hans Purrmann's triptych in the district council hall in Speyer. Published by Kunstverein Speyer / Purrmann-Haus Speyer, Speyer 1993.
  • Carl M. Kiesel: A German painter collects French graphics. In: Cat. Kaiserslautern, Purrmann Collection 1963, pp. 1–3.
  • Hans Kinkel: Hans Purrmann in Montagnola . A picture report. St. Ingbert 1973
  • Peter Kropmanns: Matisse in Germany. Vol. 1-4 (typescript). Dissertation from Humboldt University Berlin , 2000.
  • Adolf Leisen: Hans Marsilius Purrmann (1880–1966). A biographical walk through the Purrmann House. In: Speyer. The quarterly issue of the tourist association. 40, 2000 (H. 1), pp. 15-27.
  • Adolf Leisen:  Purrmann, Hans Marsilius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 11 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Adolf Leisen: The Speyer icon controversy. The dispute about the triptych by Hans Purrmann in the district assembly hall in Speyer. Purrmann House, Speyer 2010.
  • Christian Lenz: The Art of Hans Purrmann. Introduction to painting. In: Lenz / Billeter 2004, p. 21 ff.
  • Talk about Hans Purrmann . Ed. Friedrich Seel, Kunstverein Speyer in connection with the Purrmann House, Speyer. With contributions by F. Rintelen, P. Santi u. a. Lindenberg 1996
  • Berthold Roland : Hans Purrmann and his hometown - doubt and affection . Speech on the awarding of the Hans Purrmann Prize 1969.
  • Karl Scheffler: Hans Purrmann and modern colorism. In: Art and Artists. 19, 1921, pp. 3-18.
  • Annette Vogel (ed.): Hans Purrmann. Kolorist der Moderne , Munich: Hirmer 2019, ISBN 978-3-7774-3364-6 .
  • Karen Volkmann: The sculptures of Hans Purrmann. In: Cat. Bremen 1995/96, pp. 34-43.
  • Wilhelm Weber: On the life and work of the painter Hans Purrmann . In. Cat. Exhib. Mainz 1980, pp. 5-53.
  • Eva Zimmermann: Hans Purrmann in Ticino. In: Cat. Mendrisio 2011, pp. 48-89.
  • Armin Second : Hans Purrmann in his Montagnola studio in 1962. In: Film documents on contemporary history. Institute for Scientific Film, Göttingen, G 94/1964, Göttingen 1970

Movie

  • Bring me the colors ... memories of Hans Purrmann. Documentary, Germany, 2016, 29:40 min., Script and director: Uta Meyer, production: SWR , series: Known in the country , first broadcast: April 10, 2016 on SWR television , synopsis by ARD , online video available until 4. March 2018.

Web links

Commons : Hans Purrmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Haus der Kunst Munich : Hans Purrmann: Exhibition, Haus der Kunst Munich, March 23 to May 20, 1962. Catalog. 1962, p. 60 (restricted view, books.google.de ).
  2. ↑ Werner Haftmann : Ostracized Art. Visual artists of the internal and external emigration in the time of National Socialism . With a contribution by Leopold Reidemeister and a preface by Helmut Kohl . Edited by Berthold Roland . DuMont, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-7701-1940-1 , p. 405.
  3. ^ Hermann Hesse : Old painter in the workshop. Dedicated in friendship to Professor Hans Purrmann. In: The time . May 27, 1954.
  4. ^ Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Purrmann, Hans. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. In: Deutscher Künstlerbund , accessed on December 15, 2015.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  5. ^ Hans-Purrmann-Gymnasium.
personal data
SURNAME Purrmann, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Purrmann, Hans Marsilius (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist, art writer and collector
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Speyer
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1966
Place of death Basel