Ludwig Kasper

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Ludwig Kasper (born May 2, 1893 in Gurten , Austria-Hungary , † August 28, 1945 in Braunau ) was an Austrian sculptor .

Life

The farmer's son Ludwig Kasper received his artistic training as a sculptor in the years 1909-12 at the University of Applied Sciences for Wood Sculpture in Hallstatt , Upper Austria , and - interrupted by his participation in the First World War - from 1912 to 1925 with Hermann Hahn at the art academy in Munich , where he maintained a studio in the former Schwanthaler Museum with the sculptor Fritz Wrampe and the painter Florian Bosch from 1923 to 1928 .

In the 1920s, Kasper mainly created heads or portrait busts. In 1928/29 he and his future wife, the artist Ottilie Wolf (then Ottilie Kasper ), completed a year of artistic support in Paris. In 1930, the company moved to Berna in Silesia, the birthplace of Ottilie Kaspers. This year artistically marked the turn towards life-size, full-figure sculpture, which was formally closely based on Greek sculpture of the archaic period.

The move to Berlin followed in 1933, where Ludwig and Ottilie Kasper, as part of the Klosterstrasse studio community, were in close and artistically fruitful exchange with Gerhard Marcks and a number of artists later defamed as degenerate, such as Käthe Kollwitz , Hermann Blumenthal , Herbert Teuber and Werner Gilles . Kasper himself was tolerated and received as a traditionally figurative sculptor in the Third Reich , but his still breathing, "statuary" style was contrary to the baroque-eclectic monumental style of ideological stamping and was considered by the National Socialists as "not usable for propaganda purposes", so that the artist despite steady increasing demand for building sculpture only once, in 1936 in Celle , received a public contract.

Kasper was consequently partly permitted and partly denied participation in the official exhibitions of the Reich Chamber of Culture . Regardless of this, Ludwig Kasper created a large number of important works in the 1930s, including a number of standing female nudes, as well as the "Ruhende" (1935) and the "Sitzende" (1936).

Solo exhibitions took place in 1936 in the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum in Duisburg and in 1937 in the Association of Berlin Artists . In 1939 Kasper's sculptures were presented by the influential Berlin art dealer Karl Buchholz in a context that was unusual for the time, together with graphics by Aristide Maillol . Scholarships made it possible for the artist to study abroad in Greece (1936/37) and Rome (1939/40).

In the war years up to 1945, under increasingly difficult living and working conditions, mainly portrait busts and life-size kneeling or sitting female nudes were created. In his home country Upper Austria , Ludwig Kasper was awarded the Gau Prize for Plastic in 1941 . In 1943 he took up a professorship at the Werkkunstschule Braunschweig , but was forced to abandon it prematurely and subsequently to return to Upper Austria when it was bombed out. He died on August 28, 1945 at the age of 52 from complications from a kidney disease.

Ludwig Kasper mostly created life-size sculptures in marble cement and plaster of paris and only authorized bronze casts of his sculptures in exceptional cases during his lifetime . As Haftmann emphasizes, the bronze cast "was not in keeping with his sculptural imagination".

After 1945 Ludwig Kasper's works a. a. exhibited at the first documenta (1955) in Kassel . The standing woman was seen at the First Federal Garden Show in Hanover in 1951. A large number of originals is now in the Upper Austrian State Museum in Linz , where they were last exhibited in 2009.

Works (selection)

  • Spear bearer (plaster)
  • Arethusa (plaster)
  • Kneeling (marble cement)
  • Seated (marble cement)
  • Child with apple (marble cement)
  • Boy (marble cement)
  • Standing girl (marble cement)
  • Large headband tie (marble cement)
  • Small headband tie (marble cement)
  • Crouching (marble cement)
  • Portrait of a woman , larger than life (marble cement)
  • Woman's head (terracotta)
  • Concetta (marble cement)
  • Standing woman (marble cement)

Exhibitions

  • 1939: Ludwig Kasper - plastic. Galerie Karl Buchholz , Berlin (May 4th - June 3rd).

literature

  • Regina Maria Hillert: "Built Figure" studies of the life and work of the sculptor Ludwig Kasper (1893–1945), Hamburg 2017, ISSN 1617-8610
  • Tectonic plastic. New work by Ludwig Kasper. In: Die Kunst, monthly books for free and applied arts , 79th volume of the 40th volume of the F. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1939, pp. 99-105.
  • Ludwig Kasper. Exhibition catalog. Art Association Braunschweig, 1946.
  • Article by Arie Hartog in: Christian Tümpel : Deutsche Bildhauer (1900–1945). "Degenerate". Langewiesche, Königstein im Taunus 1992, ISBN 3-7845-7180-8 . P. 219.

Web links

Commons : Ludwig Kasper  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Werner Haftmann: The sculptor Ludwig Kapser. Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna: Propylaen 1978. pp. 55-58.
  2. ↑ Christof Nanko (ed.): Ludwig Kasper. 1893-1945. Sculptor. Memory of life and work. Braunschweig: Professional Association of Visual Artists, 1995, p. 40.
  3. ↑ Werner Haftmann: The sculptor Ludwig Kasper. Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna: Propylaen 1978. p. 58.
  4. ↑ cf. Martin Hochleitner: "Somehow he was always there ...". In: Political Sculpture. Barlach / Kasper / Thorak / Wotruba. Linz: Landesgalerie 2009. pp. 53–74. With regard to an assessment in the context of contemporary history, the author comes to the conclusion that Kasper's work “needs neither the prosecution nor the defense”.
  5. ↑ Christof Nanko (ed.): Ludwig Kasper. 1893-1945. Sculptor. Memory of life and work. Braunschweig: Professional Association of Visual Artists, 1995, p. 41.
  6. ↑ Hitler. Heroes. Helplessness , in: Der Standard , September 16, 2008
  7. ↑ Werner Haftmann: The sculptor Ludwig Kasper. Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna: Propylaen 1978. P. 72.
personal data
SURNAME Kasper, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Gurten (Upper Austria)
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1945
Place of death Braunau