Hermann Blumenthal (sculptor)
Hermann Blumenthal (born December 31, 1905 in Essen , † August 17, 1942 near Kljasticy , Russia ) was a German sculptor .
Life
Hermann Blumenthal's talent for drawing was already noticed at school. At his own request, he left secondary school in 1920 at the age of fourteen and began an apprenticeship as a stonemason in his hometown, which he completed in 1924. He then worked as a journeyman and carried out works for Will Lammert , among other things . From 1923 until he moved to Berlin in 1925, he attended evening and Sunday courses at the Essen School of Applied Arts, which later became the Folkwang University . His teacher in modeling and life drawing was Joseph Enseling . In October 1925, Blumenthal enrolled at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin. First he studied with Wilhelm Gerstel , from 1927 with Edwin Scharff , whose master class he became in 1929. In 1931 he finished his academic training. As early as 1928 Blumenthal exhibited for the first time at the Prussian Academy of the Arts , a year later he became a member of the German Association of Artists and received the City of Cologne Prize .
Blumenthal was considered a very talented young sculptor , who was particularly encouraged by Edwin Scharff at an early age. In 1930 he successfully applied for the "Great State Prize" of the Prussian Academy of the Arts, which entitled him to a nine-month stay at the Villa Massimo in Rome . By the end of the Weimar Republic, the political situation had already become so radical that Blumenthal was defamed as a “Jew” on the occasion of the award ceremony in the right-wing press because of his name.
In October 1931 the young sculptor traveled to Rome and there consolidated his own formal language. While his early works were still based on the cubist, elegant style of his teacher Edwin Scharff, Blumenthal, under the influence of ancient art from the pre-classical period , found a calm image of man that dealt formally with simple situations such as sitting, standing and kneeling. From 1932 to 1934 Blumenthal lived in Nowawes near Potsdam in difficult economic circumstances. At the end of 1934 he was able to move into a work space in the studio community at Klosterstrasse in Berlin-Mitte . Over the years, a group of painters and sculptors came together in Klosterstrasse who tried to preserve an individual understanding of art , even under National Socialism . There was a close artistic connection between Ludwig Kasper and Hermann Blumenthal; Gerhard Marcks and Toni Stadler also belonged to this group of independent sculptors.
Their style of art, which was not officially valued, made it difficult for these sculptors to make a living. Hermann Blumenthal in particular was always dependent on scholarships and other support. In 1935 he was financed to study in Kassel . Here he created his first large-format masterpiece with the figure “Großer Schreitender”. While studying in Kassel, Blumenthal married Maria Scholz and the couple had two children.
In 1936 the gallery owner Karl Buchholz organized the young sculptor's first solo exhibition in Berlin, which was well received in the liberal press. Elsewhere, however, Blumenthal experienced rejections: the Akademie der Künste was now critical of his “ individualism ”; His works were removed from an exhibition at the Buchholz Gallery in 1937 as “ degenerate ”. Blumenthal then destroyed numerous works of his early work. On the other hand, he was granted another stay in Rome in 1936 . From October 1936 to June 1937 he was again at the Villa Massimo . He was able to extend his stay in Italy through a Villa Romana grant in Florence until October 1937. During this time several major works were created, such as the “Large Standing” and the “Large Kneeling”, but also important small sculptures, such as the “Sitting with a Cloth” or the “Sitting, Looking Up”.
After returning from Italy, Blumenthal tried mostly by participating in competitions to stabilize his financial situation. Commissioned work should also enable him to be released from military service , since he had been drafted into the Wehrmacht in May 1940 . With countless petitions, Blumenthal's friends tried again and again to obtain his discharge from the army. In October 1941 he was commissioned to design a relief for the castle in Kraków , for which he was given work leave, but was not released from the army. The state sculptor Arno Breker was finally able to obtain assignment to his home country. Before the marching orders reached Blumenthal, however, he fell on August 17, 1942 while on a guard walk along the Polazk Newel railway line in Russia.
Awards
- 1929: Prize of the City of Cologne on the occasion of an exhibition by the German Association of Artists
- 1930: Grand State Prize of the Prussian Academy of Arts , combined with a study visit to the Villa Massimo , Rome 1931/32
- 1935: Scholarship from the Reich Ministry of Education, study visit to Kassel
- 1936: Rome scholarship from the Reich Ministry of Education, study visit to the Villa Massimo
- 1937: Villa Romana scholarship, study visit to Florence
- 1939: Cornelius Prize for monumental sculpture from the city of Düsseldorf
- 1955: Posthumously participant in documenta I , Kassel
Works
- 1929/39: Striding man on a rectangular plate, bronze, h: 152 cm. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover
- 1930: Kneeling (spider), bronze, H: 103 cm. Berlin State Museums, National Gallery
- 1931/32: Creeping (Adam), bronze, H: 81 cm. Georg-Kolbe-Museum Berlin ( permanent loan from Blumenthal estate)
- 1934: Eight relief designs for the Folkwang Museum, Essen, bronze / plaster, 58 × 40 cm. Georg-Kolbe-Museum Berlin (permanent loan from Blumenthal estate)
- 1935: Portrait of Ludwig Kasper, stone cast, H: 33 cm. Georg-Kolbe-Museum Berlin (permanent loan from Blumenthal estate)
- 1935/36: Large striding man, bronze, H: 180 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle
- 1936: Seated person looking up (stargazer), bronze, h: 28 cm. Bavarian State Painting Collections, Munich
- 1936/37: Roman youth, bronze, h: 180 cm. Otto-Hahn-Platz, Kiel (acquired in 1955 by the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in memory of the victims of the Third Reich)
- 1936/37: Large standing man (Roman man), cast stone, H: 202 cm. Georg-Kolbe-Museum Berlin (permanent loan from Blumenthal estate)
- 1937: Large kneeling man (Florentine man), bronze, H: 150 cm. Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg
- 1938: Two reliefs for a fountain stele: Young man with an olive branch; Two women, stone, 225 × 125. Ruhland (Lausitz), BASF Schwarzheide
literature
- The sculptor Hermann Blumenthal . With a foreword by Christian Adolf Isermeyer, Berlin 1947
- Werner Haftmann: The sculptor Hermann Blumenthal , in: Zeitschrift für Kunst 1949, issue 4, pp. 274–277.
- Christian Adolf Isermeyer: Blumenthal, Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 331 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Hermann Blumenthal 1905–1942 , exhibition catalog Gerhard Marcks Foundation, Bremen 1981
- Hermann Blumenthal , exhibitor cat. Galerie Pels-Leusden Berlin, Graphisches Kabinett Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner Bremen, Galerie Vömel Düsseldorf, Berlin 1992
- Christian Adolf Isermeyer: Hermann Blumenthal. The plastic work . Hauswedell, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7762-0333-1
- Atelier community at Klosterstrasse 1933–1945. Artist in the time of National Socialism , exhib.cat. Academy of Arts, Berlin 1994
- Penelope Curtis (Ed.): Taking Positions. Figurative Sculpture and the Third Reich . Exhibition cat. Henry Moore Institute Leeds, Georg-Kolbe-Museum Berlin, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus Bremen, Leeds 2001
- Josephine Gabler (Ed.): Sterngucker. Hermann Blumenthal and his time , exhib.cat. Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin 2006
- Hermann Blumenthal 1905-1942. Drawing sculpture . Art trade Wolfgang Werner, Bremen 2006
Web links
- Literature by and about Hermann Blumenthal in the catalog of the German National Library
- Hermann Blumenthal on meaus.com accessed on January 9, 2013
- Hermann Blumenthal from artfacts.net accessed on January 9, 2013
- Materials by and about Hermann Blumenthal in the documenta archive
Individual evidence
- ↑ Roman youth . In: Art History (Art History Institute) . ( uni-kiel.de [accessed on November 29, 2018]).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Blumenthal, Hermann |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 31, 1905 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | eat |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 17, 1942 |
| Place of death | Kljasticy , Belarus |