Herbert Benedict

Herbert Benedikt (born September 22, 1925 in Vienna , † July 23, 1987 in Beckum ) was a painter and graphic artist of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism .

Life

Benedikt was the son of Maria Kandler-Benedikt and a Bulgarian engineering student. He was raised mainly by his mother's parents, because his father moved back to Bulgaria in 1930 after completing his studies and his mother left the parental home in 1934 to become a housemaid for an industrial household in Milan. After attending secondary school and the commercial academy, he initially volunteered at a bank at the request of his grandparents until he was drafted into the labor service in 1943 and from 1944 into the armed forces. He was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets, from which he returned in 1948 seriously ill. He only got well after a year, mainly due to the self-sacrificing care of his grandmother.

From 1950 to 1952 Benedikt studied painting with Eduard Josef Wimmer-Wisgrill and Albert Paris Gütersloh , in 1953 he became a student of Ernst Fuchs and worked as a freelance artist from 1954. In 1955 he took part in the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts Salzburg under Oskar Kokoschka and exhibited his first pictures. For the Salzburg Festival he was assistant stage designer under Oscar Fritz Schuh for several months .

Benedikt married Lieselotte Westermann from Westphalia in 1959, and the couple have lived in Neubeckum since then . From 1968 to 1974 Benedikt also taught at the Beckum and Detmold University of Applied Sciences.

plant

Throughout his life, Benedikt remained steadfastly loyal to the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, which plays a special role within Surrealism . His pictures and graphics show in a realistic imagery surreal and fantastic worlds, melancholy and Weltschmerz, but also then partly in the style of old masters natural and architectural landscapes. Benedict loved the Mediterranean area, he often traveled there. His Mediterranean landscapes show an untouched nature, which human reason gives order and rule through ancient temples and buildings of the Renaissance.

The artist's paintings are in the possession of the Minister for Science in Vienna, in the collections of the City of Vienna, the Westphalian Landscape Association of Münster, the Westphalian State Museum in Münster, the Liesborn Abbey Museum and in many private collections in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Exhibitions

In Germany, in addition to participating in many exhibitions, the first solo exhibition took place in the art pavilion in Soest in 1962, solo exhibitions continued among others in Vienna with Ernst Fuchs and in the Wilhelm-Böhler-Haus in Bonn, 1985 and 2007 in the Museum Abtei Liesborn and 1997 on the 10th anniversary of his death of the artist in 1997 in the Stadtmuseum Beckum . In 2015 an exhibition took place in Wiedenbrück under the title Herbert Benedikt - A Fantastic Realist of the Vienna School in Exile - or - The Expulsion from Paradise - Surreal Art from the Museum Abtei Liesborn .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Description of the exhibition in the Wiedenbrücker Schule Museum ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2015 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.  

literature

• Ulrich Frey: Artists see Westphalia. 73 contemporary artists . Frankfurt am Main: Weidlich 1979, ISBN 978-3-8035-1016-7 .
• Benedict, Herbert . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 9, Saur, Munich a. a. 1994, ISBN 3-598-22749-3 , p. 27.
• Martin Gesing: Introduction to the catalog of the exhibition in the Stadtmuseum Beckum, 1997.
• Ulrich Gehre : The fantastic pictorial worlds of the painter Herbert Benedikt . In: The bell of October 19, 2007.

Web links

• Literature by and about Herbert Benedikt in the catalog of the German National Library