Karl Georg Schmidt (painter)

Karl Georg Schmidt (born March 2, 1914 in Dresden , † October 31, 1987 in Bad Sassendorf ) was a German painter and graphic artist . His artistic work extended from the early 1930s to the 1980s. Schmidt was u. a. Member of the West German Association of Artists in Dortmund , the Regional Association of Westphalia of the BBK and is a founding member of the Kunstverein Kreis Soest eV KG, which was founded in 1981. Along with Carlernst Kürten , Erich Lütkenhaus , Gerhard Weber and Gordon F. Turner, one of the outstanding artists of Hellweg Konkret .

life and work

Schmidt was born in Dresden during the war in 1914. From 1930 to 1933 the art historian Will Grohmann , a friend of Paul Klee, was his teacher at the König-Georg-Gymnasium in Dresden . From his high school days, some small studies with early skill have survived. He was denied studies at the Dresden University of Applied Arts because of the dramatic political changes. So he did an apprenticeship as a decorative painter and attended evening courses in artistic subjects at the Dresden University of Fine Arts with Josef Hegenbarth . After completing his apprenticeship, KG Schmidt continued his artistic training from 1935 to 1936 at the Academy for Applied Arts in Munich, today part of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , with Josef Oberberger .

In 1939 he was called up for military service, his stations were France, Norway and, until the end of the war, Finland. His estate includes watercolors, pencil sketches and caricatures that were created during the war. In 1943 he married Anni Drescher. At the end of 1945 Schmidt was released from British captivity and moved with his family from Lomnitz , from the Dresden area, to the British zone. First he came to Hamburg-Harburg . Then he found accommodation in Tostedt (Lüneburg Heath) on the Great Moor . Here and in the Hamburg area, he looked for work, first as an assistant painter, then as a foreman, but also as a commercial artist . From this time come caricatures, sketches for decorations of peasant cupboards, drafts for wall and ceiling designs and for company advertising. He designed a theater poster for the Düsseldorf City Theaters. After successfully applying to Hoesch AG in Dortmund, commercial graphics became his constant livelihood from 1953. He moved to the Ruhr area and worked as a commercial artist at Hoesch until his retirement, most recently as an art director . He was responsible for advertisements, brochures, calendars, the company magazine, but also for exhibition stands.

In his spare time he tried as often as possible to turn to his art. Schmidt did not have a driver's license and traveled by bus and train to Yugoslavia, Liguria and Provence. He was particularly fond of the light and flair of the south. He stayed twice in Provence to study at the Atelier international artistique de Sèguret, Vaison-la-Romaine .

Schmidt became an active member of the Dortmund Artists' Association in 1975 and in 1980 he joined the Federal Association of Visual Artists (BBK) in the Westphalia South / North District Association. He took an active part in the regular annual exhibitions of the artists' association, in traveling exhibitions and in exhibitions of the Dortmund Cultural Office at home and abroad. Thanks to his knowledge of the printing industry, he was repeatedly responsible for the design of the artist group's catalogs. Works by Schmidt can often be found on the cover. Several times he was represented in the calendar of the cultural office of the city of Dortmund "Graphics from Dortmund" with original graphic works. In 1975 it was included with an original graphic in the highly esteemed artists' calendar of the Kunst Verlag Bruckmann , Munich.

At the end of his professional life, Schmidt moved to Bad Sassendorf. There he had his own studio, time to paint and experiment. In the middle of his most intensive artistic creative phase, he died unexpectedly in 1987.

KG Schmidt Archive

The KG Schmidt Archive, located in Bad Sassendorf, has set itself the task of permanently opening up KG Schmidt's artistic legacy.

Art-historical classification and evaluation

Even the early gestural, two-dimensional color works show a high degree of sensitivity in the quantitative and qualitative distribution of the color values. Thus, light-dark values, cold-warm contrasts or color quality contrasts evoke a tension structure in their arrangement, which gives the works of art both stability and dynamism. The individual, original expressive values ​​of color, applied in broad brushstrokes in the case of the early works of the early years, seem to be the general theme of this series of pictures. Schmidt shows that these genuine expressive values ​​are able to illusion a color competition and a fictitious pictorial spatiality. Even in these works, a systematic, researching progression by Schmidt, who seems to be looking for a pictorial grammar and can be compared with Ernst Wilhelm Nay or Serge Poliakoff, becomes visible. Here as there it was about exploring the principles of visual and design in art, without wanting to develop or even prescribe a binding formal language. It was only logical for Schmidt, after an extensive phase of gestural abstraction, to erase the personal handwriting in his pictorial works and to turn to geometric abstraction. 'Foldings' is the title of a series of pictorial works that evidently raise the theme of the play between pictorial surface and pictorial space. The interaction of colors and shapes leads to an emphasis on the image carrier in its two-dimensionality as well as to a pretense of an image space. Here Schmidt always throws the viewer back on his own physiological perception. For Schmidt shows this as a consistent 'motive': Fundamentally committed to the enlightenment, which enables the viewer to gain knowledge about human perception, Schmidt addresses an anonymous audience without prior art-scientific knowledge. His aesthetic formations are intuitively understandable and do not require any knowledge of drawing theory.

The numerous pictorial works of those years attest to a persistent exploration of pictorial grammatical structures, which include the color values ​​as well as the form values. Schmidt decidedly places the individual colored areas directly next to one another in order to check the spatial effect in the solitary and in the interrelation of the color values. This concept may also be reminiscent of Josef Albers and his series 'Hommage to the Square', but despite all the formal rigor, Schmidt's work is far more playful, i.e. H. experimental handling of the aesthetic expressive values. The compositions require a sensitive eye that is able to engage with the visual interplay of colors and shapes. As a result, surprising effects appear again and again, which can irritate the physiological reception.

A pleasantly reluctant interaction between Schmidt's activity as a graphic designer and his free artistic and creative work is to be assumed: If his professional activity demands a continued strict application of aesthetic means in the course of an assignment, Schmidt seems to those 'harassed' colors and forms in his artistic work to help you to express yourself freely. There is no contradiction in the fact that the artist also takes a back seat in this regard by not presenting his own brushstrokes or individual strokes. Schmidt seems to want to really seek and understand the power of its own that each color, each shape can develop independently and in interaction. This assumption is confirmed by the few but meaningful statements made by the artist about his own work.

In the systematic of his work, which has scientific traits, a line of tradition to the Russian constructivists of the early years (including discussion of 'composition / construction' in Moscow 1921/22, the 'abstract hannover' in the second half of the 1920s, the radical Positions of concrete art with Max Bill around 1930 and thus the Opart artists of the 1960s).

Schmidt's work shows a high quality; this is all the more surprising, since Schmidt did not enjoy an art academic education and was unable to integrate himself into the national or international modern art scene due to major political circumstances. He can be counted among the few artistic personalities who are able to take up the major national and international issues and thus discourses of modern art and translate them into a more regional work context. Of no small importance in this context is his contact with a few personalities who later helped shape the national art scene.

As a mediator, Schmidt fulfills an important task in the productive interactions between social discourses in large format on the one hand and regional issues and fields of interest in medium format on the other. Schmidt's work has a mediating function between international and regional art and is of central importance for a democratic culture dedicated to enlightenment and education. His works bear testimony to this and at the same time express the need to take on this particular creative radius more intensively in terms of art and museums.

Literature (selection)

• Dortmund Group and Dortmund Artists Association, Documentation, Dortmund undated
• Artists in the Soest district Painting, Graphics, Plastic, ed. vom Kreis Soest, Soest 1981, pp. 8/79
• KG Schmidt, in: Constructive Archive of the Society for Art and Design eV; Bonn, 1988
• KG Schmidt, in: Ebert, Helmut: Lexicon of visual and creative artists in Westphalia-Lippe, Münster 1999, p. 567
• Gisela and Klaus Rogge, Carl-Jürgen Schroth and Miriam Schroth (editors): KG Schmidt, Carlernst Kürten and companions, Hellweg Concrete A region in the focus of Concrete Art, Dortmund 2014, ISBN 978-3-86206-415-1 .
• Heide Drever, Dr. Karl A. Faulenbach, Sabine Krebber (editors): Erich Lütkenhaus, Gerhard Weber and fellow artists - Konkret + Spielisch, Hellweg Konkret A region in the focus of concrete art, Dortmund 2015, ISBN 978-3-86206-497-7 .
• Burkhard Leismann, Kunstmuseum Ahlen (editor): Hellweg Konkret and international contemporary art, Hellweg Konkret A region in the focus of concrete art, Dortmund 2015, ISBN 978-3-86206-521-9 .
• Conceptual Art Foundation (publisher): Hellweg Konkret and international contemporary art - supplementary volume, Hellweg Konkret A region in the focus of Concrete Art, Soest 2016

Exhibitions (selection)

Work by Karl Georg Schmidt

Work by Karl Georg Schmidt

• 1969/73 “the small gallery” Ralph Moog, Dortmund
• 1969/70/73 Galerie Wolnin, Dortmund
• 1970/72 Gallery “die goldschmiede”, Bochum
• 1972 Galerie im Hof, Düsseldorf
• 1974 Kulturbund, Eutin
• 1977 Torhaus Rombergpark gallery of the Dortmund Cultural Office
• 1978 Gallery in the Dortmund city hall
• Spa administration, Brunnenhaus on Sälzerplatz, Bad Sassendorf
• 1979 Gallery in the Dortmund city hall in connection with the cultural office
• Rural savings bank, Bad Sassendorf
• 1980 "Alte Fabrik" Burghofstrasse, Soest with Jo Kuhn
• 1981 Dieter Lohl graphic collection, Unna
• 1983 Wilhelm Morgner House, Soest
• 1984 Soest art pavilion
• 1986 cultural center / city library Gladbeck
• 1987 Art pavilion of the art association for the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis eV, Siegburg
• 1987 Kunstverein Kreis Soest eV, Werl
• 1988 Torhaus Rombergpark gallery of the Dortmund Cultural Office
• Foyer of the Soest district building
• 1989 Sparkasse Soest, Bad Sassendorf
• 1992 State Institute for Schools and Further Education, Soest
• 1993 Ev. Conference venue Haus Nordhelle, Meinerzhagen-Valbert
• 1995 Soest art pavilion
• 1999 Federal Property Office Bielefeld
• 2005 Gallery Klaus Hömberg, Soest
• 2007 Church square gallery of the Ev. Church / Ev. Community House, Bad Sassendorf
• 2014 Wilhelm-Morgner-Haus art museum, Soest
• 2015 Carlernst Kürten Foundation, Unna-Alte Heide
• 2015 Maximilianpark Elektrozentrale, Hamm
• 2016 Wedinghausen Monastery, Arnsberg
• 2016 BIG gallery, Dortmund

Artist calendar

• 1975 artist calendar '75 published by F. Bruckmann, Munich
• 1977/80/85 graphic from Dortmund, cultural office of the city of Dortmund, Dortmund
• 1980/81 Graphic calendar artists of the Soest district, Kunstverein Kreis Soest eV, Soest

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ( Kai-Uwe Hemken , University of Kassel / Kunsthochschule Kassel) in: Gisela and Klaus Rogge, Carl-Jürgen Schroth and Miriam Schroth (editors): KG Schmidt, Carlernst Kürten and companions, Hellweg Konkret A region in the focus of concrete art, Dortmund 2014, pp. 21-23