John Rewald

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Rewald (born May 12, 1912 in Berlin ; † February 2, 1994 in New York ), actually Gustav Rewald , was an art historian of German origin . In his works he mainly dealt with impressionism and post-impressionism .

Life

The son of the chemist Bruno Albert Rewald and the dentist Paula Feinstein attended the Lichtwark School in Hamburg and graduated from high school in 1931 . Between 1931 and 1936 Rewald studied art history at various universities, for example in Hamburg under Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl . In 1932 he spent a year abroad at the Sorbonne in Paris . That year he changed his first name to John. After Adolf Hitler came to power , France became John Rewald's exile . He traveled through France to visit rural cathedrals . In the process, Rewald met the painter Leo Marchutz , also from Germany , whom he accompanied to the landscapes that Paul Cézanne had painted, where he took these photographs. At the Sorbonne, John Rewald convinced Henri Focillon to allow him to use Cézanne as a dissertation subject , although the artist still seemed too modern to serve as an object of study. In his dissertation Cézanne et Zola he examined the friendship of the two artists.

From 1936 to 1941, John Rewald wrote art reviews in several newspapers. In 1939 he married Estelle Haimovici, his first wife. In the same year he was interned as a foreigner after France declared war on the German Reich , even if he was Jewish. During this internment he received the Prix ​​Charles Blanc in 1940 for his dissertation, which he was awarded in absentia . In 1941 he emigrated to the United States . This move was supported by the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York , Alfred Barr .

After arriving in New York, John Rewald first worked at Weyhe's Book Shop before working as a French translator for the US War Department in 1942. From 1943 Rewald worked as a consultant for the Museum of Modern Art and organized exhibitions in this role, for example. He also began working on his major work, The History of Impressionism , which was published in 1946 and met with an enthusiastic response. During the rest of his life he added to the book, it reached five editions.

In 1952, Rewald and James Lord founded the Cézanne Memorial Committee to protect Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence from demolition. The studio was saved with the help of American donations and handed over to the University of Aix-Marseille . A museum has been housed in the studio since 1954.

After divorcing his first wife, John Rewald married Alice Leglise-Bellony in 1956. From 1961 to 1964 he was visiting professor at Princeton University , from 1964 to 1971 he was professor at the University of Chicago . In 1977, John Rewald and William Rubin organized the major exhibition Cézanne: The Late Work exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1984 he retired from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York , where he had been professor of art history from 1971 onwards. Two years later he was awarded the Mitchell Prize for his dissertation, published under the title Cézanne: A Biography . Rewald died of heart failure in 1994 at the age of 81 .

His daughter-in-law, Sabine Rewald, is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Fonts (selection)

  • Cézanne et Zola , 1936
  • Paul Cézanne correspondance , 1937
    • Letters: the new, supplemented and improved edition of the collected letters from u. to Paul Cézanne . Translated from the French and edited by John Rewald. Zurich: Diogenes, 1979 ISBN 3-257-26005-9
  • Georges Seurat , 1943
  • Camille Pissarro: Lettres à son fils Lucien Pissarro , 1943
  • History of Impressionism , 1946
  • History of Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gauguin , 1956
  • The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalog Raisonné , 1996

literature

  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 2: L – Z. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 544-549.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the footsteps of Cézanne. (PDF; 2.0 MB) Aix en Provence Tourist Office, 2010, archived from the original on December 20, 2010 ; Retrieved July 18, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Rewald, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rewald, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American art historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 2, 1994
Place of death new York