Kurt Loewengard
Kurt Löwengard (born April 2, 1895 in Hamburg , † January 8, 1940 in London ) was a German painter.
Life
Kurt Löwengard was one of four children of the famous architect Alfred Löwengard . His ancestors had lived in Hamburg for several generations and ran an antique shop on Neuer Wall . His mother Jenny (née Kanitz), a banker's daughter, was of Jewish-Italian origin. The free-thinking parents left the synagogue and were baptized Protestants.
Kurt Löwengard learned his first artistic techniques in 1913 from the Hamburg painter Arthur Siebelist . He experienced World War I from 1916 to 1918 as a gunner in Russia and as a telephone operator in France . He got two awards.
In 1919 he began his studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar and went on extensive study trips. When he ran out of money, he hired himself as a decorative painter, advertising artist or set painter.
In 1922 he moved into a gable studio in his parents' house in Hamburg's Sierichstrasse and settled down as a freelance artist. He made etchings , woodcuts , poster designs and vignettes and gave lessons. He participated in exhibitions of the Hamburg Secession , of which he was a member. He was mainly friends with his fellow artists Wilhelm Grimm , Hans Martin Ruwoldt and Karl Kluth . In 1927 he joined the Altona artists' association . He was also a member of the Hamburg Art Association .
Between 1929 and 1939 he created a triptych on canvas workers in the port of Hamburg for the Schlankreye 13 school (now a residential building) on behalf of the city of Hamburg ( murals in Hamburg state buildings) . It survived the war .
After the death of the father, the parental home had to be sold and Löwengard moved into a studio in Eppendorfer Landstrasse.
Triptych in the Schlankreye Business School, 1929
Years of persecution
In May 1933 an exhibition of his watercolors in the Hamburger Kunstverein was closed by the National Socialist cultural bureaucracy. From 1935 he was banned from exhibiting because of his Jewish origins . During a Degenerate Art campaign in 1937, his watercolors were confiscated from the Hamburger Kunsthalle .
Löwengard wrote:
“I paint clouds and silt from sheet music,
albeit forbidden
.
This is chic with watercolor.
(Between us - I do it for pleasure.
I still have the right?) "
During the November pogrom of 1938, the Hamburg university professor Bruno Snell granted him refuge for a while. In May 1939 Löwengard left Germany and first went to London. He intended to emigrate to America. He had a transport van with his belongings stored in the port of Hamburg. This transport van did not reach him in England, nor did a small inheritance that was due to him.
In London he lived with relatives and friends for another seven months with great livelihood worries. His work could not be sold and so it became impossible for him to travel to the USA. He died in a London clinic in January 1940 at the age of 44.
His mother and sister Gusti committed suicide. His uncle Johannes Kanitz took his own life when the German troops marched into Vienna.
To commemorate Kurt Löwengard, a stumbling block was laid in front of his former residence at Eppendorfer Landstrasse 60.
literature
- Richard Tüngel: Kurt Löwengard in memory. In: The time of January 30, 1947
- Lore Wieprecht: Kurt Löwengard * 1885
- Heiner Fosseck: Kurt Löwengard: a forgotten Hamburg painter.
- Ina Ewers-Schultz: Löwengard, Kurt. The Jewish Hamburg, a historical reference work
- Maike Bruhns : Kurt Löwengard - A forgotten Hamburg painter , Association for Hamburg History, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 978-3923356355 .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Loewengard, Kurt |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 2, 1895 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 8, 1940 |
| Place of death | London |