Kurt Günther (painter)

Kurt Günther (born December 1, 1893 in Gera ; † February 12, 1955 in Stadtroda ; actually Curt Georg Paul Günther ) was a German painter .

Life

Kurt Günther grew up as the son of a printer and printer owner. Immediately after graduating from high school in 1913, he went to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dresden , where his fellow students included Otto Dix , who, like Günther, came from Gera, and Otto Griebel . With the outbreak of the First World War , Günther was drafted into military service in 1914, which he served in the air force until he was released in 1917 because of severe pulmonary tuberculosis. His financial situation allowed him to have the disease treated in Davos (Switzerland), where he met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner .

In 1919 Günther returned to Dresden and continued his studies at the Art Academy, where he belonged to Richard Müller's painting class . Günther undertook artistic experiments in Expressionism , Dadaism and Verism and he was part of the Dresden Dada group . At this time Günther worked closely with Otto Dix, both of whom often used the studio of their fellow student Viola Schulhoff - the sister of the composer Erwin Schulhoff - with; Günther and Schulhoff often support Dix, who comes from a rather humble background, financially. A monument of this time is Günther's lost, but photographically preserved painting Boxkampf , in which Dix, Schulhoff and others are shown in the audience. In 1922 Günther and Schulhoff married and moved to Bad Reichenhall , but the marriage only lasted three years, after which Günther returned to his hometown Gera. Attempts to regain a foothold in Dresden - where Otto Dix now held a professorship - were unsuccessful.

Günther quickly found acceptance and recognition among Gera artists and intellectuals. With the landscape painters Hermann Paschold , Alexander Wolfgang and Paul Neidhardt , the geologist Rudolf Hundt and others he founded the late Dadaist association pro pro bru (productive-prominent-brummochsen). Günther's predominant subject was - as in Bad Reichenhall - the portrait ; there are also veristic representations of female eroticism.

In 1928 an exhibition with works by Günther was organized in the Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin . The exhibition was arranged by Franz Roh , who also wrote the foreword to the exhibition catalog and published a little book entitled Der Maler Kurt Günther . Erich Knauf dedicated an extensive chapter to Günther in his book Outrage and Design .

From 1929 to 1931 Günther stayed in France and did, among other things, nude studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière . After his return to Gera, he caused a scandal by publicly exhibiting a painting in a shop window that showed a blonde girl in the arms of a black jazz trumpeter - it was removed by the authorities. After getting married again, Günther moved from Gera in 1932 to the nearby, secluded village of Kaltenborn , where he had bought a house. After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 Günther was affected by house searches and from 1934 show ban. In 1934 Erich Knauf visited him after his first release from prison in Kaltenborn and was portrayed several times by Günther.

Günther spent the years of inner emigration , among other things - after the birth of his first daughter in 1934 - with portraits of children, from 1936 with portraits of the Kaltenborn farmers and, from 1940, increasingly with landscape painting. In 1937, eleven of his works were removed from German museums as Degenerate Art . In 1944, fifty-year-old Günther was drafted into the Volkssturm .

After the war ended in 1945, Günther worked as a primary school and adult education center teacher in Gera, and in 1946 was appointed professor by the Thuringian state government. The last years of his life were increasingly characterized by illness and depression . Landscapes played an increasingly dominant role in his later work; Günther increasingly turned to all-inclusive painting . He finally died in 1955 in the Stadtroda district hospital and was buried in Gera.

plant

The Radionist , 1927, tempera on wood, 55 × 49 cm (acquired in 1967 from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (GDR))

literature

• Günther, Kurt . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 330 .
• Claus Baumann: Kurt Günther , Henschel, Berlin 1977
• Roland März et al .: Art in Germany 1905-1937: paintings and sculptures from the collection of the Nationalgalerie , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Die Museen, 1992, p. 152
• Holger Peter Saupe: Kurt Günther 1893–1955. For the 100th birthday . Catalog for the exhibition of the Art Gallery Gera, Gera 1993
• “The Radionist” (with illustration) in: Hermann Glaser: Small cultural history of Germany in the 20th century , CH Beck, Munich 2002, p. 130, ISBN 978-3-406-47620-4 at Google Books
• Kurt Möller's biography in: Reinhold Reith , Dorothea Schmidt: Small businesses, adapted technology? , Waxmann Verlag, 2002, ISBN 978-3-8309-1176-0 , p. 130 (in Google Books )
• Moritz Wullen: Art of the Weimar Republic: Masterpieces of the National Gallery Berlin , DuMont, 2004, p. 84, ISBN 978-3-8321-7499-6
• Kurt Günther . In: Birgit Dalbajewa (ed.): New Objectivity in Dresden . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-57-4 , p. 227-229 .

Web links

• Biography at Bildarchiv Foto Marburg based on Vollmer.