Hermann Teuber

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Hermann Teuber (born August 12, 1894 in Dresden , † October 24, 1985 in Munich ) was a German painter and graphic artist.

Childhood and youth in Dresden and Bautzen; 2 years of military service

He spent his childhood in Dresden. As the son of a coal merchant who counted many artists among his customers and collected graphics, Teuber received artistic inspiration at an early age. He often visited the Neue Meister gallery with his father . From 1908 to 1914 he was a student at the boarding school of the Catholic Teachers' College in Bautzen . It was there that the first sketchbooks with landscape drawings were created. Since 1914 employed as an assistant teacher at a Dresden suburban school, Teuber was able to attend evening courses with Georg Oskar Erler at the Saxon School of Applied Arts in head, nude and costume drawing. From 1916 he did two years of military service as an artilleryman on the French and Flemish fronts.

Studied in Dresden and Berlin

In 1919 Teuber gave up teaching. He took up studies at the Dresden School of Applied Arts under Georg Oskar Erler , and passed the drawing teacher examination for higher education . In 1922 he went to the Berlin-Charlottenburg School of Art for further training . At first he was a student of Hans Meid (etching). From 1924 to 1926 he attended Karl Hofer's painting class . One of his classmates was Ernst Wilhelm Nay .

Early recognition through numerous awards

In 1926 Teuber received the medal from the Prussian Ministry of Culture for outstanding achievements. He used a six-month stay in Paris to study landscapes in northern France. As a freelance painter and graphic artist in Berlin, he was awarded the Ilgen Prize of the City of Dresden in 1928 , in 1931 he received the Albrecht Dürer Prize of the City of Nuremberg for etchings, and in 1935 a studio grant at the Kassel Academy.

From 1930 to 1935 Teuber had a studio in a garden house in the Rummelsburg allotment colony . Teubner was a member of the German Association of Artists . From 1935 to 1945 he was a member of the Klosterstrasse studio community in Berlin. His friends and acquaintances there included Maria and Hermann Blumenthal , Werner Gilles , Werner Heldt , Ottilie (called Odi ) and Ludwig Kasper , Käthe Kollwitz , Gerhard Marcks , Herbert Tucholski as well as the art historians Werner Haftmann and Kurt Leonhard . In 1936 Teuber married Elisabeth Hachenberg. He received the Rome Prize of the Prussian Academy for a one-year stay in the Villa Massimo .

Conflicts with the Nazi dictatorship

Teuber came into conflict with the National Socialist rulers in Germany. In 1937 the opening of an exhibition of watercolors that Teuber had painted during a trip to Greece with Villa Massimo scholarship holders was prevented by the Reich Chamber of Culture . In 1938, the National Socialists removed five works from Teuber's public collections as part of the ' Degenerate Art ' campaign.

War and post-war period until 1950 on the Lower Rhine in Kalkar

In 1943 Teuber moved with his wife to their son Sebastian, who was born in 1940, to Kalkar on the left Lower Rhine . Teuber already knew Kalkar from a summer stay in 1937. He was able to move into an apartment in the Neuhaus am Kesseltor house and work there in Heinrich Nauen's former studio , but in 1944 he was drafted into military service. Shortly before the end of the war, the Berlin studio on Klosterstrasse was completely destroyed, and all of Teuber's work that had remained there was lost.

From 1945 to 1950, after his return from American captivity, Teuber lived in the Neuhaus house in Chartres in Kalkar, together with the sculptor Alfred Sabisch . In 1947 his daughter Cordula was born.

In the post-war years, which were characterized by bitter poverty, Teuber gave drawing lessons at the Collegium Augustinianum Gaesdonck boarding school near Kalkar .

During his time in Kalkar, Teuber also got to know the brothers Hans and Franz Joseph van der Grinten , who were still art history students at the time. He gave them suggestions for building up their art collection, advised them not to collect individual works from one artist but rather whole groups of works, and drew their attention to Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Schoofs . The collection has been open to the public in Moyland Castle , located near Kalkar, since the mid-1990s . It also includes around 60 paintings by Teuber. The van der Grinten brothers have dedicated several exhibitions to Teuber in their hometown of Kranenburg , including on his 100th birthday in 1994. Teuber's paintings can also be seen in the permanent collection of the City Museum of Kalkar.

In 1948 Teuber was awarded the Karl Ernst Osthaus Prize by the city of Hagen , together with Georg Meistermann .

Professor in Berlin from 1950 to 1960

Teuber has been professor of printmaking at the Berlin-Charlottenburg School of Art since 1950 and has received further awards (1951 1st prize in the graphics competition of the National Olympic Committee for a horse composition; 1953 awarded the Cornelius Prize by the City of Düsseldorf ; 1954 1st prize in the Graphics competition of the Friends of Fine Arts, Berlin). During this time he was particularly interested in color lithography .

Old age in Upper Bavaria

After his retirement in 1961, Teuber moved to Upper Bavaria, initially to Bad Heilbrunn . Further awards followed (1962 start of honorary diploma at the international graphic exhibition Saigon ; 1963 guest of honor at the German Academy in the Villa Massimo in Rome; 1966 appointment as a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts , 1972: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany). In 1972 he moved to Munich in an attic studio apartment on the Olympic site. In 1977 he exhibited in the Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg when he was awarded the Lovis Corinth Prize of the East German Artists' Guild.

Gravesite of Hermann and Elisabeth Teuber in the Winthir cemetery

Since 1977 Teuber's eyesight gradually deteriorated. His wife Elisabeth died on February 15, 1979. Teuber created his last large-format paintings in 1981. He died at the age of 91 on October 24, 1985 in Munich.

Quotes on Hermann Teuber's work

“The painter's love of silence predestined the still life. When he returned home from the First World War with a hearing loss, he painted silent music scenes, breaks or preparations. ... "

“Right from the start, Teuber made a virtue out of necessity, cultivating gray in all nuances, right down to beige. He "cultivated" melancholy. "

“The zoo animals - in contrast to August Macke's radiant Rhenish expressionism - appear in earth colors, elephants, deer, camels. The artist liked to stay in the zoological garden: the exterior as the interior. ... "

“The post-war refugee modesty found an ascetic transfiguration with him, an isolated move closer together. ... "

“Teuber has often been compared to Morandi . But Morandi's still life is inaccessible, Teuber's pictures quietly tell stories. ... "

“Teuber painted, without zealously, against time and yet gently reflected it. There was all the idyll that he painted, otherwise he would not have painted them, mussels and snail shells, a spice can and an egg timer, a wheat beer bottle and a melon, slipper flowers, snowdrops, pansies like peaches and roses, like "niche still lifes". ... "

“In old age he went blind. And painted large formats, park pictures of Nymphenburg, the bushes, the water, the architecture - a late Art Informel , if you will, like underpainting, like washed, scraped walls, pictures of great charm. ... Once again the artist made a virtue out of necessity. "

Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 1994: Idyll after the egg timer, melancholy: the painter Hermann Teuber in Kranenburg.

literature

  • Jörg Becker, Franz Joseph van der Grinten, Hans van der Grinten, Werner Haftmann, Andrea Joosten, Armin Lünterbusch: Hermann Teuber, 1894–1985, on the 100th birthday. Painting from 1928 to 1981, still life. Museum Schloß Moyland, 1994, ISBN 3-929042-06-1 .
  • Franz Joseph van der Grinten: Hermann Teuber 90 years old. In: Gaesdoncker Blätter. 37th year 1984, pp. 69-72.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903. kuenstlerbund.de. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on February 13, 2016 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Teuber, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1985
Place of death Munich