Johannes Molzahn

Johannes Ernst Ludwig Molzahn (born May 21, 1892 in Duisburg , † December 31, 1965 in Munich ) was a German - American painter and graphic artist .

Life

Molzahn, who was born in Duisburg, moved to Weimar the year he was born , where he completed his professional training as a photographer and was then in Switzerland from 1908 to 1914 .

He began painting at an early age , so that an exhibition in Weimar was dedicated to him as early as 1914 , which had been organized by Karl Peter Röhl . After the First World War , he was one of the supporters of the Working Council for Art , which existed between 1918 and 1921 , an association of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, and he also made his works available for exhibitions of this association. This was followed by exhibitions in the Der Sturm gallery , an art gallery in Berlin named after the magazine of the same name and founded by Herwarth Walden , in which Kurt Schwitters also exhibited.

In addition, Molzahn founded the “Society of Friends of Young Art” in Braunschweig in 1918 with Rudolf Jahns and Thilo Maatsch . Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee were among its members . Wassily Kandinsky also designed the group's logo. Also in 1918 he became a member of the November group founded in Berlin .

He was followed in 1919 by Walter Gropius founded in Weimar Bauhaus close before the start of the 1920 years of abstract painting approached, with his paintings often show figural elements and motifs. In 1921, Alfred Flechtheim's gallery in Düsseldorf hosted a small “Collection of Utopian-Fantastic Machines & Apparatus” entitled Zeit Taster .

On the recommendation of Bruno Taut , Molzahn was appointed head of the class for commercial graphics at the Magdeburg School of Applied Arts and Crafts in 1923, against the will of the school board and the ministry . Molzahn became a formative force with his very modern conception of art. He saw in the engineer the artist of his time. He also exerted programmatic influence and demanded that the greatest possible material impact be achieved in production with the least amount of effort.

In 1925 an exhibition with the title “The modern watercolor” took place together with works by artists from the 1922 group such as Otto Mueller , Konrad von Kardorff and Oskar Moll . In the same year the “ Society of Friends of Young Art ” together with Thilo Maatsch and Rudolf Jahns .

Later he was a teacher from 1928 to 1933 at the State Academy for Arts and Crafts in Breslau , where the metal sculptor Hermann Diesener was one of his students. During this time he also directed the exhibition of the Werkbundsiedlung Breslau in 1929 .

With the beginning of the National Socialist era and the defamation of his works as " degenerate art ", Molzahn went abroad and lived in exile in the US from 1938 , from which he only returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1959 .

Exhibitions and works

Some of his expressionist works are exhibited today in the Lehmbruck Museum in his native Duisburg. As early as 1964, the first exhibition of his paintings, watercolors, drawings and graphics took place in the newly built building of the Lehmbruck Museum. Between 1976 and 1977 there was an exhibition of pictures taken in the USA between 1943 and 1957 in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg with the title Johannes Molzahn: Melody of a Landscape , and in 1977 another exhibition of the graphic works in the Lehmbruck Museum. To mark his 120th birthday, an exhibition entitled Unloved Avant-garde is to be opened on May 12, 2012 in the Schlesisches Museum zu Görlitz .

His better-known pictures include Creation I (1916), Creation II (1916), Pulsender Stern (1919), Masculine Curves (1927), and Otto Mueller Memorial (1930). Works by Johannes Molzahn are rarely found on the art market. However, when a work comes on the market, high prices are paid for it. On June 6, 2012, Molzahn's painting Music , which was exhibited in the first solo exhibition in Herwath Walden's gallery Der Sturm in 1917 , was auctioned at Van Ham Art Auctions for around 146,000 euros .

Johannes-Molzahn-Strasse in Duisburg was named in his honor.

Publications

• On the way to the steel age theater figure . In: Die Form, Vol. 1, 1925/26, Issue 5, pp. 98-101 ( digitized version ).
• Economy of the advertising mechanisms . In: Die Form, vol. 1, 1925/26, issue 7, pp. 141–145 ( digitized version ).
• Wroclaw after the war , 1928

literature

• Christian Gries: Johannes Molzahn (1892–1965) and the “fight for art” in Germany during the Weimar Republic . Dissertation University of Augsburg , 1997.
• Babette Küster / Hans Peter Reisse: Johannes Molzahn (1892–1965): Started his career as a painter, graphic artist and teacher in 1918 . In: Martina Lüdicke u. a. (Ed.): 1918. Between defeat and a new beginning , Petersberg: Imhof 2019, ISBN 978-3-7319-0886-9 , pp. 176-189.
• Barbara Lepper: Johannes Molzahn. The painterly work. Introduction to the exhibition and catalog . Exhibition: Christoph Brockhaus and Barbara Lepper, KdA Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg 1988, ISBN 3-923576-44-7 .
• Marianne Reuter: Johannes Molzahn-Last Works , ISBN 3-7954-0635-8 , 1985.
• Siegfried Salzmann:  Molzahn, Johannes. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 21 ( digitized version ).
• Herbert Schade: Johannes Molzahn: Introduction to the painter's work and art theory , ISBN 3-7954-0405-3 , 1972.
• Dieter Scholz: A teaching of the "optical minimum". Johannes Molzahn in Breslau 1928 to 1933 . In: Dagmar Schmengler u. a. (Ed.): Painter. Mentor. Magician. Otto Mueller and his network in Breslau . Heidelberg u. a .: Kehrer 2018. ISBN 978-3-86828-873-5 , pp. 224-234.
• Meyers Großes Personenlexikon , Mannheim 1968, p. 909.

Web links and sources

• Literature by and about Johannes Molzahn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Johannes Molzahn in the Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon
• Biography (germanexpressionism.com)
• Biography and exhibitions (artfacts.net)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Homepage of the Silesian Museum in Görlitz
2. ↑ Johannes Molzahn (artnet.de)
3. ↑ [1]