Karl August Ohrt

Karl August Ohrt (born February 20, 1902 in Schönwalde am Bungsberg , † October 5, 1993 in Hamburg ) was a German sculptor , painter and graphic artist .

Live and act

From 1924 to 1932 Karl August Ohrt attended the painting class of Julius Wohlers at the Kunstgewerbeschule Hamburg am Lerchenfeld with interruptions . In 1926 he made a short visit to the Dessau Bauhaus . In 1926/27 he went on a long trip to Spain.

Dancing Girls (1935), Muschelkalk. Hamburg city park

Around 1930 he increasingly turned to sculpture and began a new course in Richard Luksch's sculpture class . In 1932 he was able to move into a studio in the Ohlendorffhaus , an old palace that the city of Hamburg made available to artists. In 1935 he married Erika Boßmann and had a son, Timm. (He became an architect and designed, among other things, the Rathausmarkt in Hamburg.) A study trip to Greece followed in 1936. In 1937 and 1938 the couple had their daughters Anne-Katrin and Trude. The Ohlendorfhaus was destroyed in the war in 1943.

With his conception of art he got into political difficulties. The National Socialist cultural policy rated parts of his work as degenerate . His figure group Tanzende Mädchen from 1935 was removed from Hamburg's Stadtpark, and the group Tanzendes Bauernpaar even destroyed. After 1945 the dancing girls returned to the city park.

In 1941, Ohrt moved into a workshop in Hamburg-Nienstedten . He was drafted into military service, was taken prisoner by the Soviets for two years and did not return to Hamburg until 1947. At first he mainly began to draw. From 1958, Karl August Ort took part in several annual DKB exhibitions as a member of the German Association of Artists . The city of Hamburg awarded him the Edwin Scharff Prize in 1961 and the Biermann Ratjen Medal in 1985 . He took part in numerous domestic and foreign exhibitions and received major public contracts.

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  Swans (1956), bronze. Grindel high-rise buildings , Hamburg

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  Girl with a Cat (1957), bronze. School at Eberhofweg 63, Hamburg-Langenhorn

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  Torso pair (1961), bronze. Gottorf Castle Sculpture Park

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  Dancers (1967), two-part, bronze. Rothenburgsort market square, Hamburg

In 1956, Ohrt portrayed his painter colleague Emil Nolde on his death bed and removed his death mask .

On his 90th birthday in 1992, the Kunsthaus Hamburg organized a large retrospective of his work. At that time, more than 40 sculptures by Ohrt were in the public space of the city of Hamburg. This number has fallen slightly in recent years, and the Hanseatic city has dismantled some plants. The next exhibition took place in 2017, organized by the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Exhibitions since 1951 ( 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 2, 2015) 

literature

• Maike Bruhns : Art in the Crisis (Volume 2), Verlag Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg, pp. 309-312
• Ohrt, Karl August . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 1 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1364-8 , pp. 223 .

Movie

• 1997: torso dual . Director: Achim Michael Hasenberg, 15 min. - Short film about the characters dancers from 1967 ( Rothenburgsort market square )

Web links

Commons : Karl August Ohrt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ohrt - The Hamburg Sculptor (Homepage)
• Description of the condition (dilapidation) from 2006/7 of the six large brick steles from 1978 on Norbert-Schmid-Platz in Hamburg-Hummelsbüttel , area Tegelsbarg housing estate, owner: SAGA .