Kat Kampmann

Katherine "Kat" Kampmann , called Katinka , (* 29. December 1908 in Schöneberg as Käthe Krischke ; † 26. February 1997 in Rangsdorf ) was a German painter .

Life

Grave site at the cemetery at Stubenrauchstrasse 43–45, in Berlin-Friedenau

Kathe Krischke attended after secondary school from 1925 to 1928, the textile and fashion school of Berlin at the Warsaw bridge . There she met the painter, graphic artist and sculptor Walter Kampmann (1887–1945) as a 17-year-old student , who had worked as a teacher there since the early 1920s and headed the design class and the working group for applied arts . Krischke was a master class student at Kampmann until 1932 and then became his employee in the working group. In addition, she worked as a freelancer from 1930; She worked for various clients and also embroidered pictures with fabrics in collage form , which she exhibited at trade fairs and at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition.

In January 1933 she married Walter Kampmann, who brought three children into the marriage. As a member of the Artists' Association Novembergruppe lost Kampmann after the " seizure " of the Nazis his job at the fashion school, followed by work ban and other reprisals. On March 15, 1933, SA troops stormed the apartments of the Berlin artists' colony . Kampmann then moved with Käthe and the children from Berlin to Rangsdorf and resigned from public life. He died in 1945 and is buried in the Rangsdorf cemetery.

After the death of her husband, Kat Kampmann looked after the children who had emerged from the marriage by making gloves from coat fabrics, weaving fabrics and painting postcards on the side, which she then sold. In 1952 she moved to West Berlin with her children . Starting with occasional painting , she began to work as a freelance painter, trying out various techniques: ballpoint pens , fiber pens , watercolor painting , and later etchings , linocuts and working with oil and colored pencils .

Contrary to the modern trend of the times, she initially worked figuratively, but at the end of the 1950s she turned to abstract painting . She described her style as "lyrically expressive".

She first exhibited her pictures publicly in 1958 at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. Further exhibitions followed a. a. especially in Berlin and Stuttgart . Her abstract motifs are based on nature and its structures. She used strong, bright colors. In her pictures she processed impressions of her homeland as well as impressions of trips she had made, e.g. B. to Verona , Venice , Florence and Lake Garda .

In 1960 she took on the artist name Kat, which at first glance appeared to be gender-neutral. She lived as a freelance painter in Berlin until her death. On her 85th birthday, she honored the Berlin artists' colony with a comprehensive retrospective of works in the communal gallery in Berlin-Charlottenburg . From 1973 to the beginning of the 1990s she lived in the Berlin artists' colony , later in Rangsdorf.

She was buried in Berlin at the Stubenrauchstrasse cemetery - very close to the grave of Marlene Dietrich  .

Her daughter is the German costume designer Cornelia-Angelika Kampmann-Tennstedt .

literature

• Angelika Kampmann: 26 soul trees. My life with and without Hundertwasser . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-8835-9 . (Autobiography)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Gerlinde Förster: On the 100th birthday of the artist Kat Kampmann on December 29th . In: Märkische Allgemeine , December 30, 2008.
2. ^ Helga Kliemann: The November group . Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1969, pp. 50-51.
3. ^ Berlin artists' colony Chronicle of Events, SPÖ Hohenems
4. ↑ Pictures of the memorial for Walter Kampmann
5. ^ Thomas Münzer: Speech for the dead of Kat Kampmann . ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Berlin artist colony, March 7, 1997 
6. ↑ Galerie am Abend, Berlin 1961
7. ↑ Vera-Ziegler-Archiv Akademie der Künste
8. ^ Gallery Nierendorf. (Ed.): Jubilee, review, documentation: 1920-1980, sixty years Galerie Nierendorf: 1955-1980, twenty-five years since the new beginning: Exhibition from June 13th-November 18th, 1980. Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin 1980, p. 224 .
9. ↑ Deutscher Künstlerbund, Stuttgart 1979 ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2008 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. 
10. ↑ Kat Kampmann retrospective. In: Berliner Zeitung , August 30, 1994