Karl Schwoon

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Karl Schwoon (born May 13, 1908 in Oldenburg ; † January 3, 1976 in Wildeshausen ) was a German painter, gallery owner and picture editor.

life and work

Schwoon was born the son of the post office clerk Hermann Schwoon (1874–1949) and his wife Johanna (née Rehkopp). He left the upper secondary school with the Obersekunda and then did an apprenticeship in the painter's hall of the Oldenburger Landestheater . In 1927 Schwoon was recommended by Walter Müller-Wulckow to the Bauhaus Dessau , where he studied with Paul Klee , Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer from 1927 to 1931 and graduated with a diploma. With Hermann Gautel , Hans Martin Fricke and Hin Bredendieck , Schwoon belonged to a group of Bauhaus members from East Friesland and the Oldenburger Land . He then lived as a freelance artist in Berlin and worked for a Berlin publishing house. In 1939 he married Ursula Petsch, the couple had a daughter and two sons. From 1940 to 1945 Schwoon did military service in World War II . At the end of the war he was taken prisoner of war . Most of his pre-war artistic work was destroyed in a bomb attack on Berlin in 1943.

After military service and imprisonment, he moved back to Oldenburg with his family. In 1946 he became managing director of the Oldenburger Kunstverein (OKV), where, among other things, in April 1947 he curated the exhibition Christian Rohlfs 1849–1938 in the rooms of the State Museum . He was also a co-founder of the Association of Visual Artists Northwest Germany , Landesgruppe Oldenburg. Schwoon was considered a supporter of artists whose work at the time of Nazism the degenerate art were attributed.

In December 1947 he founded the avant-garde gallery schwoon in Oldenburg , which provided important impetus for the regional art market in the early post-war period. In May 1948 Walter Müller-Wulckow bought an extensive bundle of graphics by Ernst Barlach , Max Beckmann , Erich Heckel , Käthe Kollwitz and August Macke from Schwoon in order to replenish the holdings of the State Museum for Art and Cultural History in Oldenburg , which had been decimated by the National Socialists . From 1949 he continued the gallery under the name Die Insel . The rooms developed into an important cultural center in Oldenburg, where book readings as well as music and theater events and picture reviews took place. The Oldenburg painters Max Herrmann , Adolf Niesmann , Willi Oltmanns , Heinrich Schwarz and Alfred Bruns presented their works there. He was also the managing director of the Volksbühne and the film club in Oldenburg.

In January 1952 Schwoon gave up the gallery for financial reasons, as the city declined further support. From 1951 to 1969 he was the picture editor of the magazine Hörzu in Hamburg and from 1969 until his death as a freelance artist in Wildeshausen. Schwoon bequeathed a significant part of his collection to the Bauhaus Archive , e.g. T. as permanent loans.

Works by Schwoon can be found in the Altona Museum ( coastal landscape , oil on hard fiber, 1968) and in the State Museum for Art and Cultural History Oldenburg ( In Memoriam Dessau I , Acryl, before 1974).

Exhibitions

  • 1964: Karl Schwoon - Pictures , Ursula Wendtorf Gallery, Oldenburg
  • 1968: Karl Schwoon , Galerie Hamburg 13, Hamburg
  • 1978: Karl Schwoon - retrospective , Oldenburg City Museum

Works

  • Red Tree , watercolor, 1928 (Bauhaus Archive Berlin)
  • Still life , watercolor, 1931 (Bauhaus Archive Berlin)
  • Dünensee , pencil, 1945 (Bauhaus Archive Berlin)
  • Falling , oil on paper, 1963 (Oldenburger Kunstverein)
  • New York Vision , Oil, 1964 (Oldenburger Kunstverein)
  • Coastal landscape , oil on hardboard, 1968 (Altonaer Museum, Hamburg)
  • In Memoriam Dessau I , acrylic, before 1974, (State Museum for Art and Cultural History Oldenburg)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Research project: The Bauhaus in Oldenburg in the Landesmuseum 2017
  2. ↑ Julia Friedrich, Andreas Prinzing (Ed.): This is how you started, without a lot of words: Exhibition and collection policy in the first years after the Second World War , de Gruyter, 2013 ISBN 978-3-11035011-1 p. 102 (at google books viewable)
  3. ↑ Bruno Jahn (ed.): The German-language press: A biographical-bibliographical handbook . Walter de Gruyter, 2005 ISBN 978-3-11096157-7 p. 989
  4. ^ Hans M. Wingler, Renate Scheffler (ed.): Bauhaus Archive Museum: Collection Catalog . Mann, Berlin, 1984, p. 300
personal data
SURNAME Schwoon, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, gallery owner and picture editor
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldenburg (Oldb)
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1976
Place of death Wildeshausen