Josef Urbach

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Josef Urbach (born March 9, 1889 in Neuss , † October 8, 1973 in Essen ) was a German painter and graphic artist.

Life

Josef Urbach was born in Neuss in 1889. From 1905 to 1910 he attended the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts ; his teachers included Peter Behrens and Fritz H. Ehmcke . In 1910 he stayed in Paris with artist friend Jan Thorn-Prikker , where they saw the breakthrough of modernism through Picasso, Matisse and Braque. Then Urbach turned to free painting and studied at the art academy in Karlsruhe with Friedrich Fehr . In 1914 he was called up for military service, where he was employed as a war painter on the Flanders front. In 1919 Josef Urbach was one of the first artists to be asked to join the expressionist artists' association “ Das Junge Rheinland ”. In 1920 he was with his friend, the writer and philosopher Karl Gabriel Pfeill , co-founder of the "White Rider" (Jungrheinischer Bund for Cultural Renewal), an association of Rhenish poets, painters and sculptors.

In 1923 Urbach became a professor at the Folkwang School in Essen and taught the drawing, portrait and nude classes. He had previously been teaching at the Essen School of Applied Arts. In the 1930s, Urbach's early art was considered “ degenerate ” and works by him were removed from the Folkwang Museum . Nevertheless, Urbach was able to continue teaching. In 1939 he was appointed to the Art Academy in Ankara. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented him from taking over teaching. In 1943 his studio in the Folkwang School was destroyed in a bomb attack and almost all of his previous oeuvre was destroyed.

After the end of the war, Urbach was offered a teaching position in Weimar in the Soviet zone in 1947 . However, he stayed in Essen and continued to teach at the Folkwang School. Around 1970 he ended his artistic and educational work due to gradual blindness. Since 1919 Urbach was married to Ottilie (née Lümen). The marriage produced a son. Josef Urbach is the uncle of the painter Walter Urbach , whom he taught privately in his youth.

plant

Josef Urbach is assigned to the Rhenish Expressionists. Urbach went through various stylistic phases in his early paintings. He took a special route from German Cubism before finally devoting himself to Expressionism . In 1923 he switched to the Rhenish Secessionists, whose style shaped his painting. Especially in his portraits Urbach developed in the direction of New Objectivity. After the end of the war, he mainly created numerous naturalistic watercolors and a few oil and acrylic paintings until 1968 .

literature

  • Josef Urbach 1889 - 1973. Memorial exhibition on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Published by the Clemens-Sels-Museum Neuss, Neuss 1989.
  • The white rider. The first scrapbook. On behalf of the Jungrheinischen Bund for cultural renewal. A. Bagel, Düsseldorf 1920.
  • Hellweg. West German weekly magazine for German art. Issue 26. Josef Urbach. Paul Alexander Schettler, Essen 1922.
  • Alfred Flechtheim : No more the blue Picassos! Edited by Rudolf Schmitt-Föller. In it: About new religious art 1920. Weidle, Bonn 2010, p. 227.

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://josef-urbach-lost-art.de
personal data
SURNAME Urbach, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuss
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1973
Place of death eat