Hans Winkler (painter)

Hans Winkler (born August 18, 1919 in Gotha , † January 28, 2000 in Weimar ) was a German painter . His main work was under the sign of Informel .

Life

Childhood and youth

Hans Winkler, born in Gotha in 1919, grew up in a working-class family. After attending elementary school, he learned the profession of script painter from 1933 to 1937. He was introduced to various techniques of the fine arts by a drawing teacher. The model of the Bauhaus artists inspired him to become a painter himself. The experience that they were persecuted more and more ruthlessly taught him the political power of innovative art at an early stage and should remain groundbreaking for his further work. In 1939 he was drafted into the infantry "as a particularly unreliable young man". Wounded several times, he survived war and imprisonment.

1945–1990

After 1945 he took his first steps as a freelance painter. Two artistic personalities of very different origins initially showed him, the self-taught artist , ways. On the one hand: Franz Markau , an expressively figurative person who, before and after the First World War, participated in the “attempt at colored folk architecture” in the circle around the architect Bruno Taut and who worked as a freelance artist in Weimar after 1945. On the other hand: the 1947 to 1949 in Schwarzenbach an der Saale acting Werner Gilles , a well-known, the Bauhaus tradition ( Lyonel Feininger ) related, at the same time from the current French painting ( Pablo Picasso inspired) figure in German post-war art. At that time, Winkler and a group of Gotha artists, which also included the painters Werner Schubert-Deister and Kurt W. Streubel , campaigned for a new beginning of art in the Thuringian region. In 1947 the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR (VBK) was founded with his participation , initially within the Association of Architects and later the Kulturbund. Winkler received first public recognition as one of the “pioneers of the cultural-political awakening under the sign of Expressionism” a year later when he was named “particularly valuable artist”.

With the declaration of Socialist Realism as the state doctrine of art politics, the Gothaer Group , which was oriented towards the international avant-garde , quickly came under the spotlight of the cultural authorities. An exhibition that Winkler and his friends in Gotha had organized without a jury in 1950 was discussed in the newspapers as anti-grassroots, American and decadent and canceled. The exclusion of the artist from the VBK followed with the same arguments. Most of the representatives of the Gothaer Group went to West Germany . Winkler stayed. He reinterpreted the exclusion as an opportunity to translate the bitter experiences into images that were as close to reality as they changed it. His artistic inventiveness unfolded in the contradiction between hopelessness and hope. And so his motto, quoted by several reviewers from an unpublished diary entry of October 12, 1978, was: "I'm not looking for a way out, I'm looking for ways."

Winkler earned his living , after completing three years of music studies at the Erfurt Conservatory in 1949 , from then on as a music teacher for the violin: first in Gotha and Sondershausen , from 1965 until his retirement in 1984 at the music school " Ottmar Gerster " in Weimar. Like many artists of abstract modernism, the SED art policy forced him to lead a double life in East Germany for decades. In the summer of 1957 he attended the International Holiday Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, which was founded in 1946 by the Kranichstein Music Institute, a “kind of 'musical Bauhaus'” . This is where the international avant-garde composer met every year. a. Luigi Nono , about whom Winkler would later write a moving poem.

In his private offside, Winkler continued to develop his nonconformist approach to painting with the materials available to him as ostracized, especially ink , watercolor , absorbent paper, but also industrial paints, flag cloths and clothing. Only after more than two decades of total coldness did he get exhibition opportunities in West Germany in the mid-1970s as part of the policy of rapprochement. In 1981 the gallery at Sachsenplatz in Leipzig organized the first exhibition of his pictures in the GDR . The Weimar cultural institutions persuaded him to re-join the VBK in 1982. This meant that Winkler galleries of the state art trade in the GDR were open. The allocation of painting materials made it possible for him to finally work with emulsion paints on larger formats . He found a studio for this in Leipzig. Exhibitions in the FRG were prohibited. In 1985 the publication of an exhibition catalog in Berlin was officially forbidden on the grounds that it was “distorted socialist image of man”. At the end of 1987 the city of Weimar made his own studio available to him.

Last years

After the fall of the Wall , the painter received his first public honor when he was awarded the "Weimar Prize 1992" from the city of Weimar. This was followed two years later by a comprehensive retrospective exhibition organized by the Weimar Art Collections , for which a representative catalog was also published. In 1998 a selection of his poems written in the 1970s was published. Winkler died in 2000.

plant

Winkler's work bears testimony to the fate of a German painter in the last two thirds of the 20th century. For political reasons, too, he stuck to the difference between art and politics, which the SED eliminated with the ordinance of optimistic ideological art in the service of the state. For him, his intransigence meant, in addition to the renouncement of suitable work spaces and materials, the isolation from the internationally important centers of art development and the art market, the withdrawal of exchange with colleagues, experts and sponsors as well as of public feedback.

Early expressionist work

Winkler's first creative period was still characterized by Expressionism . After their exhibition was broken off in 1950, Winkler and Streubel developed a printing process that they ironically called “Otik”. Winkler later said: “Otik stands for Ostzonentechnik, born out of times of need, conceived in a group together with Kurt Streubel. We mixed oven soot and floor paint to a pulp, rolled them on and then used them for printing - even if only once. ”With this technique, Winkler created the subject of Werner Gilles' expressionist picture composer on the piano in 1951 .

Informal major work

In the second half of the 1950s, the painter broke with classical modernism and turned to “other art” ( art autre ). In black and gray ink drawings from this period, objects are left with only signs that move as fragments and splinters without stopping in space.

From day-to-day experimentation with the physical properties of the materials chosen, Winkler gradually developed his personal, informal painting process. When creating an image, after deciding on the source material, techniques of more passive letting go, such as applying color fields to the glass plate, knocking off, printing and placing the sheet on absorbent newspaper, with techniques of active, targeted intervention with a brush, tube pen, spray can or squeegee in multiple, up to possibly seven repetitions of the stages. In terms of color and shape, the painter orients himself to constructive and contrapuntal composition principles that are close to him as a musician, so that the pictures as venues for conflicts make themselves understandable and ambivalences visible. This can be seen, for example, in the Indian ink drawing in sound from 1977. He always works on the écriture automatique afterwards. With the consecutive numbering of his ink watercolors within each year, Winkler helps the viewer to read his pictures carefully in the context in which they were created. In Informel - with surrealist components - he found the visual language that enabled him to make current emotional experiences of destruction and humiliation the subject of his art, at the same time the "counter-language" ( Wulf Kirsten ) to the GDR official. On March 8, 1979, he noted in his diary: “Our side of Germany is extremely poor, unfree and surrounded by a death fence. There is so much frightening happening that an existential art is provoked, mostly unknown and particularly suppressed by the state. ”Similar to the work of the informal Italian Emilio Vedova , who saw painting as a“ suffered matter of life itself ”, it is a political and moral drive, who directs Winkler's art. In 1969, he processed his horror at the bloody war of the USA in Southeast Asia in a panel painting with the title Vietnam Jungle , painted with nitro . In 1982 he expressed his grief over the decline of his own country in the work That Was Cultivated Land .

Late work with changes in style

In the mid-80s, when he was allowed to exhibit again, it became apparent that Winkler did not consider the abstract-expressionist way to be the only way to make his discomfort visible and to work on it. Briefly, figurative groups of works of an unmasking character emerge, such as heads in 1984 and later, after the fall of the Wall in 1993, Madonnas , which, of course, are of no importance in the development of the form as a whole.

Of more lasting importance, however, was a change in style, to which Winkler was inspired by the encounter with the works of the Constructivist Max Bill - exhibited by the art collections in Weimar in the art gallery on Goetheplatz from February 22 to April 19, 1987. Since this year he has been using the technique of overpainting on large panel paintings for which the necessary materials are only now available in order to carry out a change of style within the picture itself: he covers a first abstract-expressionist layer of paint with a second constructivist one strictly geometrical based on the example of Bill so that the first layer still shimmers through. The special point of this overpainting is that the geometric shapes are applied pointillistically , point by point in an elaborate process that influences the color of the lower layer of paint, but leaves it visible.

With these "two-phase pictures" Winkler accompanies the years of the state collapse. In 1991 he gave such a picture the title Are we the people and turned the well-known turning point into a question. The stylistically similar work Constructive Conjuring from the same year corresponds to such expressions of doubt . The artist inserts Goethe's famous dictum into the picture in large letters in a current alienation: “The cabbage is noble, helpful and good.” Winkler's informal art felt more secure in doubt than in certainty. That is why he won his own credo : "I do not find, I search" by reversing a confession of the master of classical modernism Pablo Picasso: "I do not search, I find."

Winkler always saw himself as a political painter, mostly in a not openly but profoundly conveyed sense. On May 24, 1990, he noted in his diary: “During the general decay, my ink watercolors were painted on all levels for fellow human beings who persisted in the dirt and gray, and my aim was always to develop a technique with which our GDR Material, aesthetic structures emerged as balance and resistance to decay. Now the disintegration has stopped, the boundaries have fallen and the aesthetics in my pictures seduce to buy too much. Due to my increasing level of awareness, I can now allow myself to develop a style that makes it difficult for people who are in a big shopping frenzy to cover themselves with art. ”Even after the fall of the Wall, Winkler retained the position of creative refusal. The tension between art and the market now becomes a theme of the works themselves. This can be seen in the work 41 art postcards on dark brown from 1993. The art postcards, which stand out from the monochrome background, are not "technically reproduced" ( Walter Benjamin ), but in turn painted.

reception

It was not until the beginning of the 1980s, when Winkler's total lockout ended, that his pictures became accessible to public art criticism. From 1982 reviews of exhibitions have been recorded in the East German daily press. In September 1989 the magazine Bildende Kunst dedicated an article to Winkler on the occasion of his 70th birthday. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, people can openly write about this artist's life and its testimony. Matthias Flügge , editor-in-chief of the magazine neue bildende kunst and later vice-president of the Akademie der Künste Berlin wrote in 1991 to Hans Winkler: “If one day the history of art that emerged in the area of ​​the former GDR is written, the criteria that have been valid until now will be written need to be redefined. The distinctions made so far between representational and non-representational, “official” and “unofficial”, realism and abstraction only ever describe aspects that inadequately grasp the specific links between the “social psyche”, work and person and creative conditions. The painter Hans Winkler stands in the midst of and at the same time outside of such pre-defined observation patterns. His work is one of those that has received far too little attention because it was created in silence. ”In the same year, Gunter Kloss honored Hans Winkler's work in the magazine Weltkunst . There are now numerous reviews and image analyzes by East and West German art scholars and critics. In art historiography, which rediscovered the cultural landscape of Thuringia after 1990, the work of Hans Winkler initially only received attention because with it, as with others, the violent interference of the SED art dictatorship in the life of an artist was to be proven. Gradually, however, the Thuringian painter found increasing art-historical recognition because of the unmistakable informal quality of his work. The picture Vietnam Jungle from 1969, one of Winkler's main works, was included in the “Permanent Exhibition of Thuringian Art of the 20th Century” set up by the Mühlhausen museums since 2014 . In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution, the Kreissparkasse Gotha organized a tribute to Winkler alongside other members of the Gotha artist group, who opposed the SED dictates in 1950 and developed their work further outside the public eye, under the motto "Remembering instead of forgetting". The painter's estate is with his family in Chemnitz . Works are in the public possession of the art collections in Weimar, the museum of Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha, the museums in Jena and in Mühlhausen / Thuringia.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1947–50 Weimar, Dresden, Gotha, Sondershausen (group)
• 1975–85 4th – 13th Hilzinger art exhibition in the town hall, Hilzingen (group)
• 1981 Gallery at Sachsenplatz, Leipzig
• 1982 Gallery in the Neruda Club , Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz)
• 1983 Gallery at Schönhof, Görlitz
• 1984 Galerie Wort und Werk, Leipzig
• 1985 Gallery in the Altes Museum, Berlin
• 1986 Gallery in the Haus der Insel, Norderney
• 1987 Gallery in the Singer Collection, Munich
• 1988 Galerie Mitte, Dresden
• 1989 Galerie am Steinweg, Suhl
• 1990 Gallery in the Filderhalle, Stuttgart
• 1991 Galerie Wort und Werk, Leipzig
• 1991 Galerie M, Berlin-Marzahn
• 1992 Profil Gallery, Weimar
• 1993 Schmidt-Rottluff Gallery, Chemnitz
• 1994 Weimar art collections, Kunsthalle am Theaterplatz
• 1996 Gallery in the Carrée am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin (group)
• 1997 Walderdorff Gallery, Trier
• 1998 Hebecker Gallery, Berlin
• 1999 Galerie M, Berlin-Marzahn
• 2000 New Museum, Weimar
• 2001 Gallery Profil, Weimar
• 2004 Harry-Graf-Kessler Art Gallery, Weimar
• 2004 Fridericianum, Leukorea Foundation, Wittenberg
• 2005 Voxxx Gallery, Chemnitz
• 2005 Friedenstein Castle, Gotha
• 2006 Borssenanger Gallery, Chemnitz
• 2009 Profile Gallery, Weimar
• 2009 Borssenanger Gallery, Chemnitz
• 2014 Galerie Borssenanger, Chemnitz and Hamburg
• 2014 Grahn Gallery, Tabarz

Literature (selection)

• Matthias Flügge: Hans Winkler in the Galerie M, Berlin-Marzahn . In: Catalog No. 16, 1991.
• Matthias Flügge: Hans Winkler. Poetry instead of image , in: Thüringische Landeszeitung, April 13, 1991, p. 2.
• Förderkreis Kunst und Kultur Hilzingen eV (Hrsg.): Catalog of the 17th Hilzinger art exhibition with the special exhibition Hans Winkler. Hilzingen 1993, ISBN 3-921413-46-X .
• Laszlo Glozer: Western Art. Contemporary art since 1939 . Cologne 1981. ISBN 3-7701-1292-X , pp. 140-168.
• Sigrid Hofer (Ed.): Gegenwelten. Informal painting in the GDR. The example of Dresden. Stroemfeld / Red Star. Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-87877-968-2 .
• Gunter Kloss: Hans Winkler. Art and artists from the former GDR . In: Weltkunst, Heft 5, March 1991, pp. 642–643.
• Weimar art collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 .
• Michael spoon wood: memory of an ostracized painter of dissidence. In: Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie, Vol. 12, 2004, Supplement, ISSN  0942-9867 , pp. 15-16.
• Michaelöffelholz: Between confusion and infatuation. Hans Winkler's painting Vietnam Jungle. Mühlhausen museums (ed.): Small writings. Volume 2. Beltz Bad Langensalza GmbH 2016, ISBN 978-3935547-64-2
• Michaelöffelholz: Hans Winkler (1919-2000): informal painting as counter-language , Vienna; Cologne; Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, [2020], ISBN 978-3-412-51544-7
• Gunter Nimmich: Hans Winkler. For the 70th birthday . In: Bildende Kunst, 37 (1989) 9, p. 13 ISSN  0006-2391
• Gunter Nimmich: “Liberation from the prison of things”. From the laudation for Hans Winkler, Weimar Prize winner 1992 . In: Kulturjournal Mittelthüringen No. 8, November 1992, pp. 24-25.
• Sigrid Popp: informal painting and unofficial collaborators. The artistic avant-garde of Dresden in the field of view of the state security. In: Sigrid Hofer (Ed.): Gegenwelten. Informal painting in the GDR. The example of Dresden. Stroemfeld / Red Star. Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-87877-968-2 .
• Karl Ruhrberg : Painting in Europe and America 1945–1960 . The second modern. Cologne 1992. ISBN 3-7701-2719-6 .
• Emilio Vedova: Sheets from the diary . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1960.
• Christiane Weber: The painter Hans Winkler - exhibitions for his 75th birthday in Weimar and Gotha . In: Thuringian regional newspaper. November 30, 1993.
• Gerda Wendermann: Hans Winkler. I don't find - I'm looking . In: Weimar art collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 7-15.
• Hans Winkler: Diary Notes. January 12, 1978-29. November 1990 . Typescript.
• Hans Winkler: Days and Words. Poems . Edition muschu. Weimar 1999.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Matthias Flügge : Hans Winkler in the gallery M . In: Marzahner Hefte Nr., 16 Berlin – Marzahn 1991, p. 3
2. ^ Gunter Kloss: Hans Winkler, art and artists from the former GDR . In: Weltkunst. Current magazine for art and antiques. Volume 61, No. 5. Munich 1991, p. 642
3. ^ ^{A b} Gunter Kloss: Hans Winkler, art and artist from the former GDR . P. 642
4. ↑ Ulrike Rüdiger : Inside Views. Art in Thuringia: 1945 to today . Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung and art collection Gera, Gera and Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-910051-27-8 , p. 36
5. ↑ Gerda Wendermann: Hans Winkler. I don't find - I'm looking . In: Weimar art collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , p. 8
6. ↑ Gunter Nimmich: “Liberation from the prison of things”. From the laudation for Hans Winkler, Weimar Prize winner 1992 . In: Kulturjournal Mittelthüringen No. 8, November 1992, p. 25
7. ^ Christiane Weber: The painter Hans Winkler - exhibitions for his 75th birthday in Weimar and Gotha . In: Thuringian regional newspaper. November 30, 1993
8. ^ Sigrid Popp: informal painting and unofficial employees. The artistic avant-garde of Dresden in the field of view of the state security . In: Sigrid Hofer (Ed.): Gegenwelten. Informal painting in the GDR. The example of Dresden . Stroemfeld / Red Star. Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-87877-968-2 , p. 66
9. ↑ Rudolf Stephan (Ed.): 1946–1996. From Kranichstein to the present . 50 years of Darmstadt summer courses. Stuttgart 1996, p. 1
10. ↑ Hans Winkler: Days and Words. Poems . Edition muschu. Weimar 1999, p. 60
11. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , p. 93
12. ↑ Gunter Nimmich: “Liberation from the prison of things”. From the laudation for Hans Winkler, Weimar Prize winner 1992 . In: Kulturjournal Mittelthüringen No. 8, November 1992, p. 24
13. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 .
14. ↑ Hans Winkler: Days and Words. Poems . Edition muschu. Weimar 1999
15. ^ Michael spoon wood: memory of an ostracized painter of dissidence. In: Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie, Vol. 12, 2004, Supplement, ISSN  0942-9867 , pp. 15-16
16. ^ Matthias Flügge: Hans Winkler. Poetry instead of image . In: Thüringische Landeszeitung, April 13, 1991, p. 2
17. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 17-25
18. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Leissling: "I don't find - I'm looking". Hans Winkler - Weimar retrospective for a persistent painter . In: Thüringer Allgemeine, January 21, 1994
19. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , p. 24
20. ^ Laszlo Glozer: West Art. Contemporary art since 1939 . DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-7701-1292-X , pp. 140–168
21. ^ Karl Ruhrberg: Painting in Europe and America 1945-1960. The second modern . DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7701-2719-6
22. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 27-31
23. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , p. 47
24. ^ Wulf Kirsten: Bridge walk. Essays and speeches. Ammann Publishing House. Zurich 2009, p. 65
25. ↑ Hans Winkler: Diary Notes. January 12, 1978-29. November 1990. Typescript. P. 8
26. ^ Emilio Vedova: Leaves from the diary . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1960, p. 40
27. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 36 and 53
28. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 54-55
29. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 74-75
30. ↑ see: Poster (59 2-2 / 74) in the city archive of the city of Weimar
31. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , pp. 40-44
32. ↑ Gerda Wendermann: Hans Winkler. I do not find I am looking for . In: Weimar art collections. P. 14
33. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , p. 45
34. ^ Förderkreis Kunst und Kultur Hilzingen eV (Hrsg.): Catalog of the 17th Hilzinger art exhibition with the special exhibition Hans Winkler. Hilzingen 1993, ISBN 3-921413-46-X , p. 29
35. ↑ Gerda Wendermann: Hans Winkler. I don't find - I'm looking . In: Weimar art collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5
36. ↑ Siegried Gohr: I don't look, I find. Pablo Picasso - Life and Work. DuMont, Cologne 2006, p. 20
37. ↑ Hans Winkler: Diary Notes. January 12, 1978-29. November 1990 . Typescript. Pp. 63-64
38. ↑ Weimar Art Collections (ed.): Hans Winkler. A retrospective . Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-929323-12-5 , p. 78
39. ^ Walter Benjamin: The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility. Three studies in the sociology of art . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1981, ISBN 3-518-10028-9
40. ^ Gunter Nimmich: Hans Winkler. For the 70th birthday . In: Bildende Kunst , 37 (1989) 9, ISSN  0006-2391 , p. 13
41. ↑ Matthias Flügge: Hans Winkler in the gallery M . Berlin-Marzahn. In: Catalog No. 16, 1991, p. 3
42. ^ Gunter Kloss: Hans Winkler . In: Weltkunst. Current magazine for art and antiques. 61. Jg., No. 5. Munich 1991, pp. 642-643
43. ↑ Elfi Dollichon: art policy in the eastern postwar Germany. With special consideration of the state of Thuringia from 1945 to 1952 . Hamburg 1992, pp. 76-88
44. ↑ Jürgen Winter: Between forest and world: The art space Thuringia in the 20th century. Painting and graphics - examples in context . Heiligenstadt 2010, p. 253

Web links

• Kai Uwe Schierz: Exhibition in the Profil gallery