Lorenz Leisner
Lorenz Leisner (born April 10, 1906 in Kiel , † March 6, 1995 in Hanover ) was a German painter and draftsman . In addition to animal studies and other projects, abstract painting is an essential part of his work. He created most of his artistic work in Hanover.
biography
1906–1936: Kiel and Lübeck
In 1906 Lorenz Leisner was born in Kiel as the only child of the entrepreneur Emil Leisner and his wife Emma Leisner (née Dräger). His father died three years after he was born. The company went bankrupt , and neither mother nor son received any support from the extended family.
Emma Leisner's sister, Alma Schlueter, became a widow at the same time. Together with Lorenz and Alma's son, the two women moved to Lübeck and formed a house community. As a master tailor, Emma ran a workshop with several employees and thus secured the maintenance. Alma took on the care and upbringing of the two children. Lorenz Leisner attended school from 1912, went to the upper secondary school in Lübeck until 1924 and obtained the higher education entrance qualification ( Abitur ). Since this was achieved by only about 3% of a school year, he was one of the educational elite of that time .
From 1921 to 1924, Leisner received drawing lessons from Hans Peters , who also enabled him to have his first exhibition. In addition, his mother gave him piano lessons despite the tight financial situation. A family reserve of 20,000 marks should enable Leisner to study art. The inflation makes in 1923 the reserve worthless and study impossible. In order to secure his income, Leisner began a commercial apprenticeship in 1924 and worked as an employee.
In 1932 he married Bertha Laatz. They had their first daughter in 1934.
1936–1947: Hanover and the Second World War
Since Leisner saw no further artistic development in Lübeck, he moved to Hanover in 1936 with his wife and daughter. There he took part in competitive exhibitions at the Kunstverein Hannover in 1937 and 1939 . In 1940 the twins, a second daughter and a son were born. In the same year Leisner was drafted into the Wehrmacht and was deployed in the Crimea and Italy . Since he was wearing glasses, he was only used in the clerk's office. The family was evacuated to Herrnhut in Saxony with the household and the previous works .
In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Americans in Italy . There he took part in stage design and drafts for the design of figures for a puppet theater . In 1947 he was released and returned to his family in Hanover. He suffered from depression . The work he had created up to this point and relocated to Herrnhut, including large oil portraits , was (and is to this day) completely lost since the end of the war.
1947–1995: Hanover and the main creative phase
After returning home , Leisner overcame the time of his severe depression by starting over again as an artist. He first made watercolors and drawings of nature. He spent much of his free time in the quiet of the Deister foothills and in gravel pits . He made a series of portraits and made animal studies at Hanover Zoo .
From around 1950 it can be seen that Leisner dared more and more to process his memories. The depicted clumps of earth and details of vegetation in his pictures were increasingly alienated. Between 1951 and 1953, Leisner's art changed from concrete objects to abstract painting. 1955 to 1959 Leisner made his own attempts at cubism and constructivism in order to achieve more meaningful images with the help of their "smashing" objects. In 1959 and 1960 he reached a phase of complete non-representationalism in his works. He began traveling to Italy, France and Switzerland ; the color palette he used expanded significantly. From around 1965 onwards, a stabilization of the process became apparent, as for Leisner a picture idea emerges from his unconscious and becomes a picture through the dialogue of colors and shapes.
In 1969 Leisner became a member of the Association of Visual Artists (BBK). In the 1970s, Leisner began to experiment with new techniques such as lithography . During this time, a series of portrait and animal studies were made again. In 1970 he also began a series of exhibitions , including from November 9, 1979 to January 4, 1980 at the Sztuki Gallery in Olsztynek , Poland . By 1987 there were a total of 16 solo and group exhibitions.
In 1973, Leisner was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease . As Leisner got older, the disease led to uncontrolled tremors in his hands. In 1984 his wife died. Initially, and for years, he continued to live in the shared apartment, which was full of his pictures. In 1990 he was admitted to a nursing home because home care was no longer possible due to the serious illness. Despite severe impairment, Leisner continued to paint. He returned to portrait studies with colored pencils. Lorenz Leisner died on March 6, 1995 in Hanover.
Work and artistic life
Leisner was born in an environment that is not to be regarded as particularly art-oriented. A relative was Emmi Leisner , an opera singer who got the title of chamber singer because of her alto voice . During his school days, Leisner took piano lessons in addition to drawing lessons. However, when the piano teacher chastised him with a head nut that was particularly painful because of a signet ring , he refused to take lessons. He promised his mother that he would learn how to play the piano by himself and did so with discipline over the years.
Leisner's oeuvre consists of around 90 oil paintings and 800 watercolors, gouaches , drawings, prints and etchings of various techniques. There are numerous portraits as well as animal, vegetation and landscape studies. The artistically most prominent part, however, is the abstract painting. Due to the economic situation, Leisner was forced to put aside his intense interest in art and take up a job that ensured the livelihood of his family. Although he pursued his artistic ambitions in his spare time, this offered him fewer opportunities to contact the artistic community than, for example, an art degree would have done.
Even before the time of National Socialism , Leisner mistrusted doctrines and was looking to question and break with objective and ideological structures. Repressions by the National Socialists, who persecuted abstract art as degenerate , against Leisner have not been passed down, presumably because his style had not yet developed into abstract painting at that time. After the Second World War he found himself in severe depression, which he overcame relatively quickly by throwing himself back into the creative arts.
His relationship to the artistic movements of the time (for example documenta in Kassel ) and in particular to the surroundings that he could reach ( Kestnergesellschaft in Warmbüchenstraße in Hanover and the Kunstverein in Hanover ) expresses a later quote from Leisner: “Warmbüchenstraße became my Place of pilgrimage ". However, he accompanied the development of modern art at a critical distance and went his own way using avant-garde style elements. His discursive painting was considered out of date compared to the established and dominant art teachings of his era . Accordingly, his work received only regional attention in the media and among the interested public .
Almost the entire plant is now privately owned by different owners.
literature
- Georg Ellerbeck (Ed.): Lorenz Leisner. Why all the painting? Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2013; ISBN 373222175X , ISBN 978-3-7322-4363-1 , ISBN 978-3-7322-5008-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reading sample with photos on books.google.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Leisner, Lorenz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and draftsman of abstract art |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 10, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kiel |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 6, 1995 |
| Place of death | Hanover |