Kurt Wehlte

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Kurt Wehlte

Benno Kurt Wehlte (born May 11, 1897 in Dresden , † April 10, 1973 in Stuttgart ) was a German specialist in painting technology. He worked as a painter , teacher of painting technology and restorer and founded the method of painting- based X-ray examinations .

life and work

Kurt Wehlte 1930

After completing general school education, Kurt Wehlte first pursued a career in architecture and then switched to the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and later to the Munich Art Academy . There he studied a. a. Painting technique with Max Doerner . When he returned to Dresden, he became a master student of Georg Lührig . In 1923 he married Christine Pleißner (1899–1990). In the four years that followed, a daughter and two sons were born.

From 1925 he worked as a painting technology teacher at the Dresden Art Academy and founded a painting technology laboratory. On behalf of Harvard University , he carried out the first x-ray examinations using painting techniques at German museums from 1928 onwards. He is considered a pioneer of this X-ray technology in painting technology worldwide .

In 1930 he was appointed to the Master School of German Crafts in Berlin-Charlottenburg and in 1933, with the recommendation of Max Slevogt, he was appointed professor at the State University of Fine Arts in Berlin .

There he founded the teaching and experimental workshops for painting technique and set up a state X-ray imaging center for painting examinations . From then on he also worked as a scientific appraiser in Europe and around the world, sworn court expert and technical expert in many forgery trials, and as an author of specialist books and specialist journals.

In 1947 he worked as an expert at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London and from 1947 to 1949 he was a freelance restorer of paintings in Berlin. On March 15, 1949, he was appointed professor at the two state academies of fine arts in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. At the Stuttgart Academy he founded the Institute for Painting Technology and set up a training class for painting restorers. He was the first in Germany to provide young students with systematic and well-founded training in this field. 1953 took place at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, the appointment as a professor in civil service for life.

His decisive contribution to the van Gogh forgery process, the Lübeck Malskat process and the solution to the Stuttgart Rembrandt case made him known worldwide. He also clarified the scientifically important issue of whether the coloring agents in a painting can be damaged by X-rays.

Since his retirement in 1963 he has devoted himself to the publication of the comprehensive standard work “Materials and Techniques of Painting”. This work has since been translated into English, Hungarian and Japanese.

Kurt Wehlte was the first in Germany to set up systematic training for young painting restorers. He always combined the artistic with the perspective of the practitioner, overlooked numerous separate subject areas and was characterized by extremely extensive detailed knowledge. He was always in demand as a consultant to numerous artists. They included important painters such as Franz von Stuck , Wassily Kandinsky , Max Pechstein , Max Slevogt , Otto Dix , George Grosz , Willi Baumeister and Anna Dräger-Mühlenpfordt . His services as a researcher and teacher were honored on July 27, 1964 by being awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class.

A Kurt Wehlte archive was set up at the Dresden University of Fine Arts .

student

Publications (selection)

  • Oil painting. Dresden 1929.
  • Wall painting. Berlin 1938.
  • Tempera painting. Berlin 1940.
  • Painting with watercolors. Stuttgart 1950.
  • What was going on in Lübeck? In: Painting technique . Technical communications for painting and image maintenance. 61/1955, H. 1, OCLC 882670632 , pp. 11-21.
  • Materials and techniques of painting. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1967, ISBN 3-473-61157-3 ; 2., revised. Edition. Ibid 1974, ISBN 3-473-61157-3 ; revised Edition with plate section. Urania-Verlag, Stuttgart 2005; revised Edition. Seemann, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-332-01665-2 .

literature

  • Helgo Alexander Pohle: Professor Kurt Wehlte - 75 years of life and work. In: Restauro . 02/1972, p. 139.
  • Wolfgang Kermer : The Academy mourns the loss of Professor i. R. Kurt Wehlte, died on April 10, 1973 at the age of 76 in Stuttgart-Sillenbuch. In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 3rd State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, October 1, 1972 to March 31, 1973. Ed. By Wolfgang Kermer. State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, Stuttgart April 1973, pp. 4–5.
  • Rolf E. Straub : Kurt Wehlte as an art technologist. In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 6th State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, April 1, 1974 to March 31, 1975. Edited by Wolfgang Kermer. State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, Stuttgart, May 1975, pp. 4-7.
  • Anne-Christine Drexler (married Henningsen): The Wehlte donation - a brief description of the academic estate of Kurt Wehlte in Dresden from the property of the Wehlte family and the creation of an archiving concept for the estate. Seminar paper, Dresden University of Fine Arts, 2003.
  • Uta Kornmeier: Art in X-rays . Radiological examinations of works of art. In: Trajectories . Journal of the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin. Vol. 11, No. September 21 , 2010, ISSN  1616-3036 , p. 4–10 , here: pp. 8a / b, 9a, 9b Notes 11, 17 and 18 ( zfl-berlin.org ( memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; 2.2 MB ; retrieved on October 23, 2019] also on Wehlte's open-minded attitude towards art-historical X-ray diagnosis).
  • Maria Körber: Studies on the painting technique of the New Objectivity in Dresden. In: Exhibition catalog Neue Sachlichkeit in Dresden. State Art Collections Dresden , New Masters Gallery . Edited by Birgit Dalbajewa. With a foreword by Ulrich Bischoff . Sandstein Verlag Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-57-4 , pp. 144-169 (description of the exhibition in the Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archives of the HfBK Dresden: inventory overview. Archiving no. 07.08 ( hfbk-dresden.de [PDF; 206 kB]). In: hfbk-dresden.de, accessed on January 11, 2018.
  2. ↑ Title recording. In: hornemann-institut.de. Hornemann Institute , accessed on October 23, 2019 (summary; no link to the text).
  3. ↑ See also completed research projects. New objectivity in Dresden. (No longer available online.) In: skd.museum.de. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, March 4, 2016, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 .;
personal data
SURNAME Wehlte, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wehlte, Benno Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, painting technician, restorer
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1973
Place of death Stuttgart