Helene Gries-Danican
Helene Anne-Marie Wilhelmine Gries-Danican (born September 5, 1874 in Kiel , † March 27, 1935 in Braunschweig ) was a German painter .
Life
Helene Gries-Danican was the second of three children of the Kiel lawyer and notary Justizrat August Gries-Danican (1838–1914) and his wife Hedwig Gries-Danican, née. Behncke (1853-1929). Her siblings were Emma (1872–1952) and Paul (1884–1951).
The nickname Danican comes from her great-grandfather, the French general Louis Michel Auguste Thévenet (1764-1848), who changed fronts several times during the French Revolution , later had to flee France and settled in Itzehoe around 1820 . There he bought the Plageberg country house, originally built as a country house for the Hamburg shipowner Jarvis, and named it Charlottenberg after his daughter .
Helene Gries-Danican suffered from facial nerve paralysis after an operation since she was six years old . As a result, she was right-sided, struggled with a speech disorder and suffered from hearing loss. Her mother therefore took over her first school education, with whom she lived in isolation on Charlottenberg during this time. But later she regularly attended the secondary school for girls in Kiel.
The symptoms of her illness increased with age. However, she was not bitter about it, but was always described as an extremely friendly, lovable person who lovingly cared for the people around her.
Helene Gries-Danican's artistic training, which was unusually diverse for a woman under the conditions at the time, lasted from 1895 to 1907, first with Georg Burmester in Kiel and Möltenort , then with the stations Dresden (1901/1902, Kops Art School ), Paris (1903/1904, Académie Colarossi ), Kiel (1905/1906), Academic Painting and Drawing School, again with Georg Burmester and Berlin (1906–1908, Dora Hitz Painting School ). From 1908 to 1912 Gries-Danican took part in the painter's colony that Georg Burmester set up every year during the summer months in Barsbek near Kiel .
In 1912 the family moved to Charlottenberg. The first major study trip took Helene Gries-Danican in 1913 to Arild in Sweden ( Kullen peninsula on the Schonen peninsula ). The results of this trip, sea pictures with bright colors, were shown after exhibitions, e.g. B. in the Kunsthalle zu Kiel , highly praised as the work of a promising young artist. The hope was always expressed in reviews that the recognizable talent would be confirmed and established.
In 1914 the family's country house, built by Joseph Ramée from 1805–1810, burned down , shortly afterwards Gries-Danican's father, who had always been their sponsor and had secured their livelihood with his income and assets, died shortly afterwards. The First World War prevented further artistic work, Gries-Danican contributed to the family's maintenance with arts and crafts. Several poems and letters from Gries-Danicans strongly influenced by ethnic and nationalistic influences have survived from this period, strongly influenced by the generally conservative family atmosphere in which she grew up.
After the end of the war, Helene Gries-Danican went on several study trips, each time of which she was encouraged to do several works, always paintings, often graphic works. With a few exceptions, the destinations of these trips were places by the sea, mostly on the Baltic Sea . For a long time she did not find her way back to the artistic format of the work she had interrupted in 1914. It was only with the four larger trips, all within Schleswig-Holstein, that she regained her previous creativity and the joy of painting, which also had a positive effect on the quality of her pictures.
Helene Gries-Danican and her widowed sister Emma looked after their bedridden mother from 1924 until her death.
By 1903 at the latest, Gries-Danican was friends with the women's rights activist Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930), as evidenced by an extensive correspondence from which Gries-Danican's letters addressed to Schirmacher are kept in the estate of Käthe Schirmacher in the Rostock University Library. Gries-Danican died on March 27, 1935 in Braunschweig.
artistic education
Based on a handwritten curriculum vitae from 1912 (archive of the Kunsthalle zu Kiel) and sources from the estate archive:
- Kiel and Möltenort: 1895–1901 and 1905–06 landscape with Georg Burmester
- Dresden: 1901–02 at the Kops art school, portrait and nude with Georg Lührig , plus graphic techniques
- Paris: 1902–04 in the Académie Colarossi anatomy and nudes with Gustave Coutois and Raphaael Colin, in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière composition with Réne Ménard
- Berlin: 1906–1908 portrait and nude with Dora Hitz
- Barsbek: 1908–1912 regular participation in the painting colony set up by G. Burmester during the summer months
Works
Almost all known paintings and graphics are in private hands. The following should be emphasized (all oil on canvas):
- Girl with Child , 87 × 81 cm, 1908;
- Dorfstrasse , 60 × 74 cm, 1911;
- Rödahallar / rock coast , 65 × 85 cm, 1913;
- The white boat , 75 × 78 cm, 1913;
- Swedish fishing port (or At the Mole ), 75 × 85 cm, 1913
- Gorse , 81 × 78 cm, 1922;
- Baltic Sea surf I , 69 × 80 cm, 1930.
- Works in museums
- Husum, North Frisian Museum Ludwig- Nissenhaus , Paul Wassily estate, Rödarhallar / Felsenküste , oil aL, 60 × 65 cm, 1913
- Itzehoe , Prinesshof District Museum , 4 oil paintings
literature
- Willy Oskar Dreßler (ed.): Dressler's art manual . Volume 2: "Fine Art", the book of living German artists, antiquarians, art scholars and art writers. Ninth year, Berlin 1930, p. 334.
- Gries-Danican, Helene . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 307 .
- Gries-Danican, Helene . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 62, Saur, Munich a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23029-5 , p. 60.
- Lilli Martius : Barsbek as a painter's colony. In: Nordelbingen. Volume 44, 1975.
- Edith Reschke, Wolfgang Reschke, Hans-Peter Widderich: Fifty years ago. Five Steinburg artists. Carl Blohm, Helene Gries-Danican, Wenzel Hablik, Max Kahlke, Hermann Wehrmann. Publication for the exhibition in the Heimatmuseum Prinzesshof Itzehoe in November 1977. Itzehoe 1977.
- Max Karstens, Edith Reschke, Wolfgang Reschke, Hans-Peter Widderich: Helene Gries-Danican. 1874-1935. Catalog for the exhibition of the Künstlerbund Steinburg in March 1979 in Itzehoe. Itzehoe 1979.
- Ulrika Evers: German female painters of the 20th century. Painting, sculpture, tapestry. Hamburg 1983, pp. 103-104.
- Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen: Lexicon of Schleswig-Holstein female artists. Ed. from the Städtisches Museum Flensburg, Heide 1994.
- Hans-Günter Goldbeck-Löwe, Holger Vanselow: Helene Gries-Danican. 1874-1935. 2nd edition, Berlin 2001.
- Telse Wolf-Timm: Painter on the east bank of the Kiel Fjord around Heikendorf. From the late 19th to the middle of the 20th century. In: Nordelbingen - Contributions to art and cultural history. Volume 70, 2001, pp. 117-140.
- Katharina Keienburg: On the artistic professionalization of women around 1900 using the example of Helene Gries-Danican (1874–1935). Lüneburg 2006 (Master's thesis).
- Harald Goldbeck-Löwe: Helene Gries-Danican. A walk through the 1993 exhibition. Marstall Ahrensburg cultural center. CD-ROM with HTML documentation, ISBN 978-3-937556-19-2 , Berlin 2006
- Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen with the assistance of Miriam Popken and Claudia Wendt: Representative of the Schleswig-Holstein Art Cooperative. In: Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen (ed.): "I have to ... collect": The art collection of the painter friend, Wagnerian and doctor Dr. Paul Wassily (1868–1951) in Kiel. Publication for the exhibition of the same name. Kiel 2006, p. 88.
- Telse Wolf-Timm and Mareike Wolf, with contributions by Katharina Keienburg and Harald Goldbeck-Löwe: Helene Gries-Danican (1874–1935). A pioneer of modernity in Schleswig-Holstein. Catalog for the exhibition in the Schleswig-Holstein State Library. Kiel 2008.
Web links
- Literature by and about Helene Gries-Danican in the catalog of the German National Library
- Everything about Helene Gries-Danican on helene-gries-danican.de
- Käthe Schirmacher's estate - complete edition published by Harald Fischer Verlag, Erlangen
- Exhibition spring 2014 in Itzehoe
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lilli Martius, 1975, pp. 118-119
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gries-Danican, Helene |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gries-Danican, Helene Anne-Marie Wilhelmine (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 5, 1874 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kiel |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 27, 1935 |
| Place of death | Braunschweig |