Henri Nouveau

Henri Nouveau , actually Heinrich Neugeboren , (born March 6, 1901 in Kronstadt , Austria-Hungary , † January 12, 1959 in Paris ), was a Franco-German painter, sculptor, composer, pianist, writer and art theorist.

Life

In 1912 Heinrich's father, the engineer Franz Adolf Neugeboren, a great-grandson of Daniel Georg Neugeboren , was called from Kronstadt to Budapest on business. Heinrich started drawing and painting at an early age. The eleven-year-old high school student then received specialist piano and drawing lessons in Budapest. Attending the opera in the Hungarian capital continued to encourage his interest in music, and it was above all Wagner's “Tristan” that cast a spell over the young Heinrich. Such an experience should also become a visual impulse: Heinrich now also designed fairytale theater decorations.

When he graduated from high school, he had made up his mind to become a musician. In 1921 Heinrich Neugeboren began his studies at the University of Music in Berlin . After completing his studies - as a student of Egon Petri , Ferruccio Busoni and Paul Juon - the excellent pianist and budding composer was for two years, 1924–1925, a master student of Nadja Boulanger at the École Normale de Musique in Paris.

The 1920s in Berlin and Paris were marked by extremely lively creative work; not a year went by without at least one chamber music work being created. The publishers “Robert Deiss”, “Alphonse Leduc” and “Durand” published some of these pieces of music, and the Société de Musique Indépendente performed Nouveau's music for the first time in “Triton”. The French radio continued this initiative, and when a few years later, in 1934, the decision was being made as to which of the young up-and-coming artists should represent the French composer's school at the international music competition in Florence, the choice fell on Henri Nouveau.

plant

As a composer devoted exclusively to chamber music , at the same time as a painter, Nouveau initially created mostly small-format pictures with surrealist figures. The art theorist, painter and sculptor Hans Mattis-Teutsch , who also came from Kronstadt and was living in Paris at the time, brought him to the abstract method of representation. Most of his main works, however, were created in the style of French surrealism .

Several well-known galleries exhibited his paintings in France and his paintings were also on view in Germany , Italy , Switzerland and Sweden . The museums "Galerie de France", "Musée d'Art Moderne", the "Stedelijk Museum" in Amsterdam and the Pinakothek of the Leverkusen Moirsbroch Castle acquired pictures by Henri Nouveau. Years later, Leverkusen was to become the city where an “exceptional work” found a permanent location: Henri Nouveau's famous Bach monument “Monument dédié à J.-S. Bach ”, designed in Dessau in 1928 as a three-dimensional sculpture after a few bars of the E-flat minor fugue from volume 1 of the“ Well-Tempered Clavier ”.

Henri Nouveau left a rich oeuvre for posterity: 50 pieces of chamber music, over 1000 paintings and graphics, as well as ceramics, decorative jewelery, essays on art theory, literary stories and, last but not least, the profound aphorisms in his diary, which he kept for over four decades.

After his death in 1963 friends and artists founded the Association des Ami de Henri Nouveau / Henrik Neugeboren in Paris , which looks after the artistic heritage and organizes exhibitions and concerts.

literature

• Chamber music in the auditorium (Heinrich Neugeboren and Lola Bobescu ). In: Kronstädter Zeitung (Brașov-Kronstadt), March 13, 1932.
• Jean Jacques Duparcqu: Henri Nouveau. Edition Michel Couturiers, Paris [1959].
• Michel Seuphor: Henri Nouveau, hongrois, peintre et compositeur. Galerie de France [catalog, 1959].
• Claus Stephani : musician and visual artist. A book about Henri Nouveau (Heinrich Neugeboren), who was born in Kronstadt. In: Volkszeitung (Brașov / Kronstadt), 10/672, September 2, 1966, p. 3.
• François Mathey: Henri Nouveau / Henrik Newborn: A Work from the Prisma Collection. Editions Diméo, 1969 [texts a. Folding bays].
• Henri Nouveau (1901-1959). Cavalero Gallery, Cannes. Exposition du 24 Février au 20 Mars 1968 [catalog].
• Rudolf Franz Reschika: Path of a Painter and Musician. Henrik Newborn - Henri Nouveau in memory, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death. In: Neue Literatur (Bucharest), 2/1969, February issue, pp. 115–117.
• Henrik Newborn / Henri Nouveau: Notes on an Essay. In: Neuer Weg (Bucharest), 21/6263, June 21, 1969, p. 3.
• Small artist lexicon. Henrich newborn. Composer, pianist and painter. In: Neuer Weg (Bucharest), 24/7123, March 31, 1972, p. 8.
• Mihai Nadin : Henri Nouveau and his homeland. In: Karpatenrundschau (Brașov-Kronstadt), 9/36, September 3, 1976, p. 4.
• C [laus] S [tephani]: “City where nothing is going on”. From Henri Nouveau's correspondence with the artist couple Marie and Hans Mattis-Teutsch . In: Neue Literatur (Bucharest), 29/1, 1978, pp. 72–74.
• Lexicon of the Transylvanian Saxons. Wort und Welt Publisher: Thaur b. Innsbruck, 1993, Henri Nouveau: p. 372.
• Hans Bergel : Art as a permanent formula of existence. Henri Nouveau, a native of Kronstadt and Paris by choice. In: Neue Kronstädter Zeitung (Munich), 17/4, December 20, 2001, pp. 4–5.
• Transylvanian artist near Paris. Exhibition opening in Pontoise: Henri Nouveau / Henrik Newborn. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung (Munich), 52/20, December 15, 2002, p. 8.
• Beyond abstraction. Au-delà de l'abstraction. Henrik Newborn 1901–1959, Henri Nouveau. Museums of the city of Kornwestheim (text flyer).
• Konrad Klein: Henri Nouveau - a Kronstadt from Paris. In: Neue Kronstädter Zeitung (Munich), 19/2, 25 June 2002, p. 5.
• Exhibition in Regensburg: Henri Nouveau / Heinrich Neugeboren. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung (Munich), 50/7, April 30, 2003, p. 7.
• Rudolf Franz Reschika: Heinrich Neugeboren - artist of international repute. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung (Munich), March 19, 2009.
• Art exhibition in Altenburg: Böhm Collection with Hans Mattis-Teutsch and Henri Nouveau. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung (Munich), September 22, 2012.
• Gabriel Badea-Păun: Pictori români în Franța, 1834–1839. Noi Media Print: București, 2012, p. 190. ISBN 978-606-572-014-5
• Anita Gunne: Henri Nouveau - a complex artistic personality. (Translation from "Bună ziua Brașov".) In: Neue Kronstädter Zeitung (Munich), Volume 31, No. 118, March 31, 2015, p. 8.
• Claus Stephani: Once a day to the Palais du Louvre. Romanian artists in France / On a book by Gabriel Badea-Păun. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Romania (Bucharest), December 30, 2015, p. 11.

Web links

• Literature by and about Henri Nouveau in the catalog of the German National Library