Hubert Berke
Hubert Berke (born January 22, 1908 in Buer (today Gelsenkirchen-Buer ), † November 24, 1979 in Cologne-Rodenkirchen ) was a German painter and graphic artist .
Life
Berke came from a Catholic family. He was educated in the Episcopal St. Josef High School in Bocholt and in a mission school in Bensheim in the Odenwald . He received a thorough humanistic education here and was prepared for a future life as a missionary in China. The early contact with East Asian art and philosophy and getting to know foreign cultures would influence his later work.
After graduating from high school, Berke decided to study painting from 1930 to 1932 at the University of Münster and the University of Königsberg to study philosophy, Catholic theology, ancient languages and art history. The lectures given by the then very well-known Christian existential philosopher Peter Wust (1884–1940) made a great impression on him.
Via Königsberg , where he continued his studies in art history and painting with Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965), one of the spiritual pioneers of Expressionism , and the painter Fritz Burmann (1892–1945), he finally arrived in 1932 as one of Paul's last pupils Klee (1879–1940) at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . When he was deposed by the National Socialists in 1933 and had to return to Switzerland, Berke also left the academy, briefly continued his studies on the Lower Rhine with the expressionist Heinrich Nauen (1880–1940) in 1934 , before finally settling in Cologne , mainly from Orders as an advertising and book illustrator lived.
In addition, he created an independent artistic work, u. a. many works on paper in which he refined the monotype technique he had learned from Paul Klee and, like his teacher, knew how to alternate between abstraction and representationalism.
Hubert Berke was married to the textile artist Brunhilde Hoppe (1913–2006) since 1937, with whom he had three children, including Eva Ohlow (* 1940), who works as an artist in Cologne.
Since 1955 he has created his famous nail pictures, objects, machines, glass windows, mosaics and tapestries. Since 1960 he has held a chair for "freehand drawing and watercolor painting" at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen .
Hubert Berke was a member of the German Association of Artists .
plant
In addition to the influence of his Düsseldorf teacher, one can often discover a relationship to Alfred Kubin (1877–1959), especially in the graphic and illustrative work , with whom he met personally in 1940 on his estate in Zwickledt (Upper Austria).
“At that time he mainly drew playful phantasmagorias, dances of death, also harmless mother, child, flower and doll pictures, which he was able to exhibit, but quietly daring watercolors, drawings and woodcuts that largely transformed the figurative into an often ironic, often ambiguous and Transfer form-dissolving movement and fantasy.
Astonishing abstractions, parables for irrationality and the macabre, dull ghost of the time, a separate surrealism and a separate dynamic abstraction emerged. They attest to Berke's intellectual independence and his consistent endeavor to carry the artistic possibilities of modernity through this terrible time. Some woodcuts from the end of the thirties convey in their fragility and disintegration - the wood grain, the marks of the knife, the disintegrating object forms - an instability of the recognizable, which is linked in content with the theme of rotting and the penetration of life with death. "
After the Second World War, he and the painters Hann Trier , Joseph Fassbender , Georg Meistermann , Eugen Batz and other personalities from the Rhenish cultural scene were among the founders of the Alfterer Thursday Society in 1947 , one of the early artistic associations in post-war Germany Artist group " ZEN 49 ".
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After the war, Berke became known mainly as an abstract artist of lyrical Informel , but was the creator of windows and mosaics in ecclesiastical and secular buildings (including the Bonn Collegiate Church , Federal Association of German Employers' Associations, Cologne), of stage sets for the Cologne Opera and textile designs (including for the house of Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard) and - in terms of time before and mentally independent of the later “nail artist” Günther Uecker - of nail objects in reality a universal artist. He alternated playfully between abstraction and representationalism and was always illustrative. a. to Ernest Hemingway's snow on Kilimanjaro . or to Friedrich Gerke Sirmione A wreath of sonnets With Heinz Schildknecht and his friend Erich Mülbe he edited the Ruhr Almanac .
Stained glass window
- Olpe , chapel in the mother house of the Franciscan Sisters, Maria-Theresia-Straße 32, executed by Oidtmann 1969.
- Bonn, Stiftskirche , glass window cycle 1976
- Essen , holy wall in the Christ the King Church
Prizes and awards
Hubert Berke received a number of important prizes: the Cornelius Prize in 1948 in Düsseldorf, Young West Recklinghausen in 1950, the Great Art Prize of the City of Cologne in 1961, and the Konrad von Soest Prize of the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association in 1962.
Exhibitions
He had numerous important exhibitions at home and abroad (including Paris 1948, São Paulo 1953, Pittsburgh 1958, Tokyo 1959, Documenta II in Kassel 1959, New York 1959, 1960). Five museums in North Rhine-Westphalia (Art from North Rhine-Westphalia, Aachen-Kornelimünster; LWL State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster; Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn ; German Glass Painting Museum Linnich; Municipal Museum and Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen) honored the 100th birthday in 2008 with different aspects of his work and a common catalog.
literature
- Barbara Asboth: Relief and object art by the Cologne artist Hubert Berke (1908–1979). Dissertation, Vienna 1991.
- Marina von Assel (ed.): Through abstraction to the symbolic. Caspar Walter Rauh, Hubert Berke. (Exhibition catalog) Kunstmuseum Bayreuth, Bayreuth 2004.
- Ulrich Bartels: By and with Hubert Berke. Directory of all books and writings illustrated by Hubert Berke, the writings and folders with original woodcuts and an appendix on his glass art work and mosaics. (Private print) 2nd expanded edition, Münster 2008.
- Sabine Fehlemann , Werner Schäfke (ed.): Hubert Berke. Masks in the swamp. (Exhibition catalog) Cologne City Museum / Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal, 1992.
- Ursula Geiger: Hubert Berke. The early work 1933–1955. Verlag Galerie Reichard, Frankfurt am Main 1990.
- Friedrich Gerke : Hubert Berke. Documentation of his 30 years of work 1932–1962. (= Small Writings of the Society for Fine Arts in Mainz , Issue V.) Mainz 1962.
- OJ Groeg (Ed.): Who is who in the arts. Ottobrunn, 1975, p. 49.
- challenged. Images of resistance. In memory of Hubert Berke and Karl Schwesig. (Exhibition catalog) Gelsenkirchen City Museum, Gelsenkirchen 1998.
- Richard Kreidler: Form language and subject matter in the complete oeuvre of the Cologne painter Hubert Berke (1908–1979). Dissertation, Bonn 1988.
- Richard Kreidler: Hubert Berke. Publishing house Aurel Bongers, Recklinghausen 1988.
- Richard Kreidler: Cologne. A picture brochure of the Hanseatic City of Cologne from 1937. In: Kölner Museums-Bulletin , issue 3/2003, pp. 38–53.
- Richard Kreidler: The painter Hubert Berke in Cologne 1934–1945. In: Kölner Museums-Bulletin , issue 2/2004, pp. 4-18.
- Hubert Berke 1908–1979. Exhibition catalog; State institution for art from North Rhine-Westphalia, Aachen-Kornelimünster / Rhineland Regional Association, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn / LWL State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Münster / German Glass Painting Museum Linnich / City Museum Gelsenkirchen, DuMont, Cologne 2008.
- Wirtschaftsverband Bildender Künstler NRW eV, District Association Cologne-Aachen (ed.): Visual Artists in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Volume 2. Aurel Bongers, Recklinghausen 1967, p. 28.
- Berke, Hubert . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 183 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Hubert Berke in the catalog of the German National Library
- Hubert Berke - masks in the swamp. Works from the 30s and 40s. Press release on the exhibition in the Westphalian State Museum , 2008
- Website about Hubert Berke
- Materials by and about Hubert Berke in the documenta archive
Individual evidence
- ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Full members of the Deutscher Künstlerbund since it was founded in 1903 / Berke, Hubert ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. (accessed on November 16, 2015)
- ^ Artwork of the month, May 2001, State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster
- ^ Rowohlt-Verlag , Reinbek 1949
- ^ Heinrich Kutsch (private print), Aachen 1965
- ^ FP Büchner, Erich Mülbe (Red.): Ruhr-Almanach. About miners and mining. (with 20 color plates and 62 line drawings by Hubert Berke) German coal mining management, Essen 1950.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Berke, Hubert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 22, 1908 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Buer |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 24, 1979 |
| Place of death | Cologne-Rodenkirchen |