Heinz Felsch

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Heinz Felsch (born July 14, 1922 in Weißenfels ; died March 14, 2016 in Halle an der Saale ) was a German painter and graphic artist.

In addition to an extensive oeuvre of pictures in oil and mixed media, as a trained lithographer he also produced a large number of lithographs in his own printing workshop. The subjects of his pictures and graphics are primarily landscapes and still lifes, but also portraits and people.

Life

After graduating from school, he began a commercial apprenticeship, which was discontinued at the beginning of the Second World War . Heinz Felsch was drafted into the war at the age of 17 and used as a driver in France . He was later to be sent to Africa , but was instead assigned to the Air Force in Russia , where he was used on reconnaissance flights. In one attack, he suffered a traumatic brain injury from shrapnel . Until the end of the war he was treated in a hospital in Denmark . There he also began to draw. 

Immediately after the end of the war he began an apprenticeship as a lithographer and from 1946 studied at the Burg Giebichenstein art school in Halle / Saale with Professor Charles Crodel .

Heinz Felsch belonged to a group of painters at the Burg Giebichenstein art school whose works are known as the “ Hallesche Schule ”, a trend in modern painting from the 1940s to 1950s that arose under the influence of the two art professors Charles Crodel and Erwin Hahs . The term “Hallesche Schule” describes a certain regional conception of continuing and developing classical modernism.

Heinz Felsch and the painter Albert Ebert had a lasting friendship between artists and men until his death in 1976. They met during their studies and during this time shared a room in the Pauline, an outbuilding of the Burg Giebichenstein art school. The physical and mental closeness of Ebert can be felt in many of the pictures with everyday subjects at Heinz Felsch.

When Charles Crodel was appointed professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1951 , he wanted to take Heinz Felsch with him as an artistic assistant and lithographer. Heinz Felsch decided to stay in Halle for family reasons. 

In 1949 he married Brigitte Reiff , a fellow painter , who also had a Crodel student, and the couple had a son and two daughters.

The two artists regularly spent the summer months of the late forties and fifties in Ahrenshoop am Darß . Numerous pictures and graphics originate from this time, inspired by the contradicting rough and at the same time lovely landscape between the Baltic Sea and the Bodden. 

From the mid-sixties to the end of the seventies, Heinz Felsch worked on larger commissioned works (art in architecture) with the support of his wife Brigitte Felsch-Reiff. Mosaics and murals were created for public buildings, primarily schools and hospitals in Halle and the surrounding area. 

For the Reil Polyclinic in Halle / Saale they created three large mosaic friezes, two of which can still be seen. Another 17 meter wide mosaic frieze still exists in a school in Braunsbedra in the Halle Saalkreis.

When government contracts failed to materialize at the end of the seventies, and the artistic activity was no longer sufficient for a living, the couple improved their financial situation with ceramic jewelry, small medallions and other small ceramics, which they produced and sold in their own workshop.

Heinz Felsch kept painting, well beyond 90. He also meticulously prepared the frames of his pictures with old-master silver leaves.

In 1951 Heinz Felsch became a member of the State Association of Visual Artists Saxony-Anhalt, and from 1952 he was a member of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR . 

In 2018 the book "Heinz Felsch 1922 - 2016" was published with an introduction by Dr Paul Kaiser from the Dresden Institute for Cultural Studies.

Exhibitions

  • Numerous group exhibitions
  • Participation in the art exhibitions of the GDR
  • Exhibition of the Crodel students 2014 in Halle
  • Solo exhibition 2017 in the gallery STUDIO_13A, London, SE23 3HG
  • Solo exhibition 2018 "Heinz Felsch 1922 - 2016" in the Kunstkaten Ahrenshoop in cooperation with the Galerie Alte Schule Ahrenshoop

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ PETER GODAZGAR: Halle: Leaving permanent traces . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . ( mz-web.de [accessed on August 19, 2017]).
  2. ↑ http://www.studio13a.london
personal data
SURNAME Felsch, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Weissenfels
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 2016
Place of death Halle on the Saale