Karl Kluth
Karl Kluth (born January 12, 1898 in Halle an der Saale ; † December 15, 1972 in Hamburg ) was a member of the Hamburg Artists' Association , the Hamburg Artists and the Hamburg Secession . During the Nazi dictatorship in Germany , he was able to continue working with the authorities despite numerous problems. In 1940 he was called up for military service and was taken prisoner by the Soviets. After returning home (1949), he was elected to the boards of the German Association of Artists and the Hamburg Artists' Association in 1950 . In the same year he was in theFree Academy of the Arts in Hamburg . In 1952 he accepted a professorship at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg .
education
1919 to 1922 at the Karlsruhe Academy with Albert Haueisen and August Babberger . These two teachers were students of Ludwig Thoma and taught in his tradition. Babberger also conveyed a dynamic originating from the Expressionists . In addition, Kluth based himself on the works of Edvard Munch . In 1920 he received a scholarship from the academy and traveled to Hamburg. In second place after Berlin , Hamburg housed the largest and best collection of modern painting in Germany. At the center of the small but fine circle of advocates of modern art were the museum director Max Sauerlandt and the graphic collector Gustav Schiefler , Munch friend and author of his graphic directory. In the art dealership Commeter, exhibitions of national avant-garde art could be seen and the art historian Rosa Schapire was actively involved in the new art. But the port and its milieu also attracted numerous artists from outside the Hanseatic city in the period after the First World War .
Hamburg
From 1923 Kluth exhibited with the Hamburg Secession. At first he received little recognition from conservative art critics in his new home in Hamburg. Its intense coloring was met with incomprehension. The group of buyers also remained limited. Accordingly, he and his wife lived in great material need. He had to get by with part-time jobs, such as a stoker in a hospital. During the Great Depression, he was dependent on the support of artists' aid several times. In 1928 he received his first recognition at an exhibition of Hamburg artists in Berlin, which was also heard in the Hanseatic city. The editor of the magazine “Der Kreis” Ludwig Benninghoff wrote about him: “... in Berlin, Kluth was particularly noticeable to all the critics as the only ingenious and thoroughly working nature.” In the same year Kluth received the Lichtwark Prize together with Hans Henny Jahnn . In 1929 he visited Edvard Munch on a recommendation from Gustav Schiefler during a trip to Scandinavia and worked with him for some time.
Artist festivals
Karl Kluth was one of the main initiators of the artist festivals , called Zinnober , which were popular among the Hamburg bourgeoisie . He drew caricatures, took part in the painting of the event building ( Curiohaus ), made posters and directed revues.
"Secession style"
Towards the end of the 1920s, the painters of the Hamburg Secession found national recognition for the first time and made a name for themselves with their “Hamburg painting”. During this time, Kluth developed the so-called secession style together with other younger members of the Hamburg Secession. Helmut R. Leppien characterizes this style as follows: “Well, 1930, we find in Ballmer and Nesch , in Kluth and Fiedler , in Bargheer and Kronenberg and in Grimm a style of design that is dampened by curved lines that combine the forms Colourfulness is determined by the tendency towards very strong tone contrasts. ”Maike Bruhns points out that Kluth, inspired by Munch, recognized that color not only denotes the visible but can also be used as a carrier of dramatic action:“ The motifs or figures win through statuary or isolation, sometimes sign-like significance (...) A kind of composite style was created that united opposites: abstract forms with realistic pictorial elements, drawings and the painterly. "(Bruhns)
The time of the Nazi dictatorship
In 1933, Max Sauerlandt, director of the Museum of Art and Industry and the State Art School, appointed Karl Kluth as a lecturer. Before Kluth could take up the position, however, he and all the lecturers appointed by Sauerlandt were dismissed by the cultural authority, which was now functioning as a Nazi party. Max Sauerlandt was also dismissed.
Kluth's painting “Nude on a Red Sofa” (1933) was used by the Nazis as an opportunity to forcibly end the twelfth exhibition of the Hamburg Secession. The allegation was that it was pornography . A landscape painting by Kluth, "Wegespuren II" from 1933, also in the exhibition, was criticized as " cultural Bolshevik ". The Hamburg Secession Exhibition was the first to be banned in Nazi-ruled Germany.
Despite the politically motivated attacks, especially by the “ Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur ”, Kluth was able to continue exhibiting. The Hamburg NSDAP Mayor Carl Vincent Krogmann found Kluth's pictures “not bad” and paid him a visit in his studio. In June 1936, Kluth's pictures were still hanging in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in the “Contemporary Hamburg Art” department. One critic even wrote in 1935: “Karl Kluth is in the vanguard of modern German painting.” The painter himself saw his situation more skeptically in a letter to the Hamburg art patron Emmi Ruben : “It's all very nice, but you get the feeling that you only paint for your colleagues. "
In 1934, Kluth and Willem Grimm received a Norwegian scholarship. At the end of this trip, Kluth visited Edvard Munch one last time.
“The big scandal and the end of any freedom of movement”, as Maike Bruhns writes, came for modern art in Hamburg when the artist association exhibition “Painting and Sculpture in Germany” in 1936 in the Hanseatic city was closed after just ten days. Angry Nazis damaged two watercolors by Kluth in Berlin that same year.
The "Degenerate Art" campaign in 1937
During the state-ordered “ Degenerate Art ” campaign in 1937, Kluth's paintings “Snowfield in Norway” (1934) and “Portrait of Hans Ruwoldt” (1930) were removed from the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Presumably both plants were destroyed. In addition, about 23 graphics by Kluth fell victim to this action.
"Factory exhibitions"
Outside the Reich Chamber responsible for the arts, Otto Andreas Schreiber organized so-called factory exhibitions for the workers within the German Labor Front . Some sheets by Karl Kluth were also on view in the context of these exhibitions.
Income situation
By preventing his teaching post at the Hamburg State Art School, the Nazis had taken Kluth off what he believed to be a secure income base. He therefore had to continue to get by with private art classes. In 1935 and 1937 he received support from the Amsinck Foundation. The art patron Emmi Ruben also helped him by buying pictures (e.g. “Ash Wednesday”, 1934).
From 1937 Kluth worked as a set designer on the city stage in Kiel for the artistic director Kurt Eggers-Kestner , with whom he was friends. However, the collaboration only lasted until 1939. In the summer of that year there was a “cultural Bolshevism” scandal because of Kluth's sets for a Wilhelm Tell production. Eggers-Kestner presented himself in front of Kluth and lost his post as a result. Only through relationships could he be saved from the concentration camp and then went into hiding in Berlin. Kluth went back to Hamburg. In the summer of 1940 he temporarily found a job as a portrait and still life teacher at the Schmilinsky art school . He stood in for Eduard Bargheer , who had not returned from a study trip to Ischia .
War experience
In the same year he was drafted into the armed forces at the age of 42 . After he was first used in France, he then came to the Eastern Front and was taken prisoner by the Soviets. Only nine years later, in 1949, was he allowed to return to Hamburg. After returning home, he processed his war experiences in the monumental painting “The War” that hangs in Gottorf Castle .
Post World War II art
In 1950 he was elected to the board of the German Association of Artists. But while Informel was the most important, if not the only art movement to be valued in Germany after the Second World War , Kluth remained true to its realistic roots. In connection with the Hamburg Secession style, he continued to paint partially stylized figure pictures and portraits. This did not mean a standstill in development. He now preferred larger formats, the figures almost always filled the entire picture surface, the colors increased in intensity. The picture surface became more relief-like. He worked on the natural form in such a way that it was difficult to decipher, so to speak "barred" by hatching-like surfaces. Drawing elements increasingly covered the picture.
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Kluth taught for thirteen years, from 1952 to 1965, at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg . As a teacher, he tried to let his students become independent. He attached great importance to reflections and discussions, which he placed above the teaching of technical skills.
For example, the painters of the ZEBRA group ( Dieter Asmus , Nikolaus Störtenbecker , Peter Nagel and Dietmar Ullrich ) emerged from Kluth's art class .
The last few years
After his retirement, Kluth continued to work freely in his studio at Hamburg's Grindelhof . In 1956 and 1966 the Hamburger Kunstverein showed two large retrospectives of his work. In 1972 another exhibition took place in Oldenburg.
Karl Kluth died on December 15, 1972 of heart failure in his adopted city of Hamburg; he was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery.
Works (selection)
- Nude on a red sofa, 1933 (oil / canvas, 75 cm × 100 cm), Hamburger Kunsthalle
- Traces of the road II, 1933 (oil / canvas, 80 cm × 100 cm), Collection Hamburger Sparkasse
- Portrait of Gustav Schiefler , 1931 (oil / canvas, 140 cm × 100 cm), Collection Hamburger Sparkasse
- Self-portrait of Karl Kluth, 1937 (oil / canvas, oA), Hamburger Kunsthalle
- Caricature to Willem Grimm from the almanac for the “Zinnoberfest”, 1933, 15.2 cm × 10.6 cm, Galerie Herold, Hamburg
- Caricature of Fritz Kronenberg from the almanac for the “Zinnoberfest”, 1933, 15.2 cm × 10.6 cm, Galerie Herold, Hamburg
- Portrait of Theodor Heuss , 1956 (oil / canvas, 128 cm × 118 cm), Kiel City Hall
Exhibitions
- Artistic tendencies in Hamburg after 1945. Haspa Gallery, Hamburg 2007
- Exhibition Karl Kluth in Hamburg , Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, April 20, 2018 to April 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Board members of the German Association of Artists since 1951 ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2015 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 September 14, 2015)
- ↑ Celebrity Graves
- ↑ kiel.de: Portrait of Federal President Prof. Dr. Theodor Heuss (accessed September 14, 2015)
Literature and Sources
- Volker Heydorn : Painter in Hamburg . Vol. 1 and 2, Hamburg 1974 ff.
- Maike Bruhns : Karl Kluth (1898–1972) . in: The painters. Arthur Illies, Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann, Karl Kluth . Hamburg 1989.
- Helmut R. Leppien , in: The painter Willem Grimm, 1904–1986. Life and work . Hamburg 1989.
- The Hamburg Secession. The art collection of the Hamburger Sparkasse . (Ed.), Hamburg 2002.
- Friederike Weimar: The Hamburg Secession, 1919–1933 . Fischerhude 2003.
- Anja Iwa: Karl Kluth . In: Collector's Journal 11/2018. Pp. 43-43
Web links
- Literature by and about Karl Kluth in the catalog of the German National Library
- Karl Kluth in the online exhibition Becket in Hamburg in 1936 of the State and University Library Hamburg
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kluth, Karl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 12, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Halle (Saale) |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 15, 1972 |
| Place of death | Hamburg |