Hermann Obrist

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Hermann Obrist (born May 23, 1862 in Kilchberg near Zurich , Switzerland ; † February 26, 1927 in Munich ) was a draftsman, designer of furniture and embroidery, and a sculptor. He is considered one of the founders of German Art Nouveau .

Hermann Obrist (1862–1927), draftsman, furniture designer, sculptor
Hermann Obrist

Life

Wall hanging with cyclamen ( Munich City Museum )

Obrist was born the second of four children to the Swiss doctor Carl Kaspar Obrist and the Scottish noblewoman Alice Jane Grant Duff of Eden. In 1876 the parents separated and Obrist moved to Weimar with his mother . In 1885 he began studying medicine and natural sciences in Heidelberg , which he gave up in 1887.

During a trip to England and Scotland in 1887, Obrist got to know the Arts and Crafts Movement early on . When he returned he learned to make ceramics in Jena, which led to a break with his mother because he exhibited and sold his recently rediscovered works. Obrist then studied at the arts and crafts school in Karlsruhe. In 1889 he attended the World Exhibition in Paris and moved there the following year to study sculpture at the Académie Julian . During this time he got to know the works of Auguste Rodin . The first portrait busts and wall fountains were created.

In 1892 he moved to Florence , where he worked as a sculptor. The works have only survived in photographs. In Florence he also met the American art historian Bernard Berenson and his partner and later wife, the art critic Mary Smith Costelloe. Under the leadership of his mother's companion, Berthe Ruchet, he founded an embroidery studio with Italian artists, which he brought to Munich in 1895.

Fountain , first set up in Cologne, later at Krupp in Essen

In 1896, with the construction of his studio house at Carl-Theodor-Straße 24 (today: 48) in Schwabing, the first ensemble of Munich Art Nouveau with furniture based on his own designs and by Bernhard Pankok and Richard Riemerschmid was created . The furniture is now in museum collections; after the fire in 1944, the house only exists in a converted form.

Obrist then gained international attention with the exhibition of his embroidery in the Littauer Art Salon in Munich, which established his reputation as an exponent of Art Nouveau. In the same year he showed a tomb design for the first time at the annual exhibition in the Munich Glass Palace .

In 1898 he founded a. a. with August Endell , Richard Riemerschmid, Bernhard Pankok and Peter Behrens the United Workshops for Art in Crafts to promote the production and sale of the new art direction. In the same year he married Marie-Luise Lampe from Leipzig (1867–1952); In 1900 the daughter Leila was born (December 22, 1947 missing) and the daughter Amaranth was born in 1901 († 1944 while trying to save the burning studio house).

Thorny stem with bud (detail). State Graphic Collection Munich

In 1902, together with Wilhelm von Debschitz, he founded the teaching and experimental studios for applied and free art , which is still called the Debschitz School for short in professional circles today , in which he was involved until 1904. Their curriculum, which aimed to combine craft and artistic training, is now regarded as the forerunner of the Bauhaus founded by Walter Gropius .

Because his hearing got worse and worse, and eventually he became deaf, Obrist withdrew from his apprenticeship in 1904 and worked on his designs for tombs and fountains in the following years. In 1914 Henry van de Velde invited him to take part in his theater building at the Cologne Werkbund exhibition with reliefs and a free-standing fountain. During the First World War , Obrist increasingly withdrew into private life and became seriously ill. The last public appearance of his works took place in the context of the exhibition Unknown Architects of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst in the gallery of IB Neumann in Berlin in 1919.

plant

Obrist works are based on the intensive examination of nature and its u. a. microscopic structures newly discovered by Ernst Haeckel . His plant ornaments are distinguished by a precise study of nature and a dynamic animation of form. Obrist also looked for completely new forms in sculpture. The decorative tasks of the tomb and the fountain offered him the opportunity to create almost abstract forms in this actually conservative art form before abstraction found public recognition in Germany. But even Obrist was largely denied recognition and his work was forgotten until the 1960s.

The graphic work and part of the written estate is now in the State Collection of Graphics in Munich . A significant part of the designs for fountains and tombs survived the fire in the studio house, as the Obrist's daughters managed to donate the works to the city of Zurich in the early 1940s. Today they are preserved by the Museum of Design in Zurich. Embroidery can be found there and in the New Collection in Munich and in the Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna) .

Awards

Own writings

  • Collected Essays and Lectures: New Possibilities in Fine Arts. Leipzig: Diederichs-Verlag 1903.
  • A happy life , first published in: Hermann Obrist. Sculpture / space / abstraction around 1900 , pp. 99–143.

literature

  • Dagmar Rinker:  Obrist, Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 406 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Annemarie Bucher: Obrist, Hermann. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Hermann Obrist - New forms of the plastic through the influence of architecture . In: Markus Stegmann: Architectural Sculpture in the 20th Century. Historical aspects and work structures , Tübingen 1995, pages 44–52.
  • Dagmar Rinker: The Munich Art Nouveau artist Hermann Obrist (1862-1927). Tuduv studies, series art history vol. 79. Munich: tuduv 2001.
  • Freedom of line. From Obrist and Art Nouveau to Marc, Klee and Kirchner. Exhibition catalog Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster. Edited by Erich Franz. Bönen: Kettler 2007.
  • Hermann Obrist. Sculpture / space / abstraction around 1900. Exhibition catalog Museum Bellerive / State Graphic Collection Munich, Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess 2009. ISBN 9783858812391
  • Hermann Obrist. In the Network of Arts and Media around 1900. Edited by Sabine Gebhardt Fink and Matthias Vogel. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2013. ISBN 3-86599-178-5
  • Bredt: Obituary for Hermann Obrist In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 14, 1927, pp. 317–321
  • Ingvild Richardsen : »Passionate hearts, fiery souls«. How women changed the world . Frankfurt / M .: S. Fischer, 2019, pp. 142–147, ISBN 978-3-10-397457-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anne Feuchter-Schawelka: "... a kind of higher potter?" Hermann Obrist's early ceramics from Bürgel. In: Hermann Obrist. 2013, pp. 215–242.
  2. ↑ Hermann Obrist. Sculpture / space / abstraction around 1900 , pp. 165–175.

Web links

Commons : Hermann Obrist  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Colonel, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and co-founder of Art Nouveau
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Kilchberg ZH
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1927
Place of death Munich