Kurt Magritz

Kurt Magritz (born November 13, 1909 in Johanngeorgenstadt ; † June 15, 1992 in Berlin ) was a German architect , painter and graphic artist .

Kurt Magritz 1969

Life

The son of the customs inspector Rudolf Magritz was born in the Saxon Ore Mountains and grew up in Dresden , where his father was transferred soon after his birth. Magritz studied architecture in Dresden and Berlin from 1928 to 1935. In 1933 he married the actress Hannelore Korb-Deutsch; in the same year they both tried to emigrate. In 1935 he finished his architecture studies in Dresden. They survived the Nazi era at great dangers. From 1935 to 1945 Kurt Magritz was employed by the Dresden construction company Bruno Kost as a structural engineer and designer. During the attack on Dresden on February 13, 1945, many of his early artistic works were destroyed. Shortly afterwards he was sent to the front. After the war he became involved in an anti-fascist committee in Bernsbach (Schwarzenberg district), co-founded the Free German Cultural Association of Saxony in Dresden and joined the KPD at the end of 1945 ( SED after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946). In 1946 he became a lecturer at the Academy of Graphics and Book Art in Leipzig and was appointed professor there the following year. 1950 to 1954 he was editor of the Illustrierte Rundschau in Berlin . In the early 1950s Magritz sharply criticized the work of Ernst Barlach , whom he accused of nihilistic and formalistic tendencies. From 1952 to 1961 he was editor-in-chief of the GDR magazine, Deutsche Architektur . In 1952 he was appointed a corresponding member of the German Building Academy, to which he switched full-time in 1961 and where he worked until 1974. In the 1970s and 1980s he moved his artistic work to Finkenkrug / Falkensee .

As a painter and graphic artist, Kurt Magritz took up the socially oriented expressionism of Käthe Kollwitz and, from 1932 to 1945, created an oeuvre directed against fascism, the persecution of the Jews and war. His work as a freelance artist includes linocuts and woodcuts, pen drawings, pastels and watercolors, oil paintings and stained glass window designs. Works by him are u. a. in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, the Museum of Young Art in Frankfurt (Oder) , the Hermitage St. Petersburg, the University of Tartu and the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

Work (selection)

Paintings and graphics

• 1932 graphic cycle Revolution ( street fighting , demonstration , meeting ).
• 1933–1945 In the dark years , graphic works such as: Treadmill , Klagende Frauen (1933), Hangman's cart (1934), I think of Germany at night , It still grabs you all! , Jewish suffering (1935), The night and its children (1936), Schrei , How long should we carry the cross! (1937), War (1939), That is why I want to push you out of this country ... (1943), Because we will ruin your cities , Mother's tomb , In Memoriam Käthe Kollwitz (1944).
• 1945–1947 Pen-and-ink drawings such as Demons of Destruction and Zu Rainer Maria Rilke's Duineser Elegien (1946).
• 1946–1949 Pastels and oil paintings like you came from the dark , On the French Revolution and Spanish Vision: Barricade .
• 1965/1966 Requiem for Hannelore , linocut cycle (large format: 75 × 126 cm).
• 1968/1972 Dresden Elegy , in memory of the women killed in the bombing, linocut cycle (large format: 78 × 182 cm).
• 1969/1980 fire in the sky , apocalypse , homecoming of the dead , in memory of the war (oil and acrylic painting).
• 1976/1978 large-format collage pictures (approx. 180 × 100 cm): longing , farewell .

Fonts

• Poems . Typesetting and printing in the workshops of the Academy for Graphics and Book Art, Leipzig 1949.
• The tragedy of architecture in West Germany. In: Deutsche Bauakademie (Hrsg.): German architecture. Culture and progress, Berlin 1952, pp. 15–28.
• (with Kurt Liebknecht ): The great role model and socialist realism. Culture and progress, Berlin 1952.
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) . With an introduction by Kurt Magritz. EA Seemann publishing house, Leipzig 1952.

literature

• Kurt Magritz. In the dark years. Graphics and drawings 1933–1945. (Catalog for the exhibition in the Albertinum from March 15 to April 30, 1967.) Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Tetzner & Zimmer, Karl-Marx-Stadt 1967.
• Erhard Frommhold : Art in Resistance. Painting, graphics, plastic 1922 to 1945. VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1968.
• Leonid N. Stolovič: Man was alien to himself. The graphic work of Kurt Magritz in the years 1933–1945. (Translated from the Russian by Klaus Herr.) Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1978.
• Maria Rüger (arrangement): Kurt Magritz. Drawing, printing, painting. (Catalog for the exhibition in the Märkisches Museum Berlin from March 21 to May 28, 1978.) Berlin 1978.
• Marlies Schnaibel: Time is encoded in symbols. On the 100th birthday of Kurt Magritz. In: Märkische Allgemeine of November 10, 2009
• Anke Scharnhorst, Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Magritz, Kurt . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Eckhart J. Gillen: A double life between duty and inclination. The architect, artist and cultural politician Kurt Magritz (1909-1992) Kunstblatt-Verl. Dresden 2017. ISBN 978-3-9815797-5-8

Web links

Commons : Kurt Magritz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Kurt Magritz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography at SLUB
• Kurt Magritz at www.falkensee-internet.de (accessed on November 16, 2017).