Marta Hoepffner

Marta Hoepffner (born January 4, 1912 in Pirmasens , † April 3, 2000 in Lindenberg im Allgäu ) was a German photographer . Hoepffner is also the namesake of the "Marta Hoepffner Prize for Photography", which has been awarded since 2002.

Life

Marta Hoepffner grew up in a middle-class family in Pirmasens. Hugo Ball , one of the founders of the Dada movement , was part of the family environment . Her parents encouraged her talent for drawing and painting, while at the Lyceum Marta Hoepffner developed a preference for natural science subjects.

In 1927 the family moved to Frankfurt am Main. From 1929 to 1933 Marta Hoepffner studied painting, graphics and photography under Willi Baumeister at the Frankfurt Art School, which later became the Städelschule . She joined the “Bund Das Neue Frankfurt” of the New Frankfurt project . There she met Ella Bergmann-Michel and Friedel Dehnhardt, with whom she remained on friendly terms for a lifetime. With the takeover of power by the National Socialists and the ideological harmonization of the art institutes, Willi Baumeister was withdrawn from teaching at the art school. Marta Hoepffner broke off her studies and founded the "Workshop for Artistic Photography" in 1934. In 1937 she received an exceptional license without an apprenticeship or journeyman examination for the master craftsman examination. In this context, the first color photographs were taken with Herzog's duxochrome process. Photo stories for Das Illustrierte Blatt as well as portraits of soldiers and public figures, among others, secured their livelihood.

When her studio in Frankfurt am Main fell victim to the bombs in 1944, her experimental work and the photographic equipment had already been relocated to Hofheim am Taunus . She always carried important negatives with her. In Hofheim am Taunus she was able to set up a temporary studio and laboratory, and she and her family found a place to stay there. In the immediate post-war years, acquaintances and friendships with Ida Kerkovius , Max Ackermann , Heinrich Wildemann developed in the Stuttgart circle around Willi Baumeister; in Hofheim am Taunus with Hanna Bekker vom Rath , Marie-Luise Kaschnitz , Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff . The collector Erich Stenger made her first acquisitions of her photographic works .

In 1949, the first complete exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein contributed to publicizing the young artist's work in this phase of the cultural rebuilding, and received a wide journalistic response. Early experiments, photo compositions, abstract forms and photograms were shown . As a consequence of this successful exhibition, in 1949 she founded the “Marta Hoepffner Photo School” in Hofheim am Taunus. The school concept of this state-recognized private photography school was based on the ideas of the Bauhaus and linked technical and artistic aspects. The school's domicile, a spacious villa at Kapellenstrasse 4, was opposite the so-called “Blue House” of the art patron and collector Hanna Bekker vom Rath. The private photo school was one of the most successful private photo schools in Germany. Marta Hoepffner was also active as a journalist, she published numerous articles ( Foto Prisma , Foto-Magazin , American Photography and others) that deal with modern photographic design forms and new possibilities of expression.

In the years that followed, Hoepffner took part in numerous exhibitions, such as Otto Steinert's first exhibition "subjective photography" in Saarbrücken in 1951 , the annual exhibitions of the Society of German Lighters (GDL) and the Photokina picture shows. In the course of the 1950s she made several trips to other European countries, resulting in photo reports for Westermann's monthly magazine with texts by Kasimir Edschmid and Ernst von Salomon . In 1962 Irm Schoffers, Marta Hoepffner's master class student, became a teacher and partner at the photography school.

From the mid-1960s, Marta Hoepffner attracted a great deal of attention with her light kinetic objects, which she referred to as "variochromatic light objects". Avant-garde photos and light objects were subsequently represented in numerous international exhibitions.

In 1971 the company moved to Kressbronn on Lake Constance and in 1975 the photography school was closed.

Marta Hoepffner was a member of the Deutscher Werkbund , an appointed member of the Society of German Photographers (GDL), the Association of Visual Artists (BBK) and an appointed member of the Association of Freelance Photo Designers (BFF). She died on April 3, 2000 in Lindenberg im Allgäu.

plant

Marta Hoepffner's artistic work can be traced for more than five decades, which can be described as the path from the photograph to the light graphics to the light object. Hoepffner's artistic work began in the mid-1930s. The first photographic experiments, including surrealistic photo montages , compositions and still lifes, were made in the “hidden” . Inspired by the sound world of modern music, for example by Stravinsky and de Falla , she realized abstract black and white photograms using stencils she designed and made herself.

Following her teacher Willi Baumeister and the “technically mediated seeing” László Moholy-Nagy , Marta Hoepffner tied in with constructivist designs and achieved her own conceptions of distanced photographic imagination, whereby she orientated herself strongly to painterly models. During those years she also created graphical landscape photographs as well as her “abstract forms in nature”: structural photographs of tree bark, traces in the sand, decay of wood, facades, etc. She exchanged letters with the philosopher Ludwig about the repetition of rhythmic forms in nature Klages .

Between 1939 and 1945 she continued her photographic experiments and applied new techniques. She worked on strictly composed and “painterly condensed” compositions, which she abstracted using photo-technical processes and designed in the finest shades of gray.

After the Second World War , she created her first interference images in polarized light , that is, photos of double-layered x-rayed tissue and liquid layers with the interposition of Zeiss-Bernotar filters . Black and white photograms were created in polarized light: abstract informal images, i. H. Paper montages and crystallizations on photo paper or under Formica .

Above all, however, Marta Hoepffner has been concerned with fundamental studies of color photography since the early 1950s : color solarizations, color relief photographs and color photographs. She studied Newton's theory of colors and the world of waves and rays. Since 1958 she only worked on cameraless pictures and concentrated almost exclusively on the medium “light as the source of all colors”, as Marta Hoepffner put it. She increasingly moved away from imaging photography and devoted herself to her color photograms in polarized light.

The division of light into colors became her concern; In doing so, she went beyond photography and developed her first variochromatic light objects in 1965: there are gradual changes in the color of the illuminated collages (structured, colorless transparency structures as in the color photograms) to the complementary colors after manual or motorized rotation of a filter disc. From 1968 she created both light objects and color interference images on color paper with poorly structured image elements and reduced color intervals.

Works by Marta Hoepffner can be found in numerous German and international public collections.

Honors

• 1996 Maria Sibylla Merian Prize for female visual artists in Hesse
• 1999 State Prize for Art - Photography section of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate
• 2001 Foundation of the Marta Hoepffner Society for Photography eV
• In 2002 the "Marta Hoepffner Prize for Photography" was awarded for the first time in Hofheim am Taunus

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• 1949 Living photo: Contemporary photography , Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurter Kunstverein
• 1950 Photography , Milan, Circolo Fotografico Milanese
• 1970 Variochromatic light objects and color photograms , Heidelberg, Kabinett Dr. Grisebach
• 1973 Light and Kinetics , Konstanz, Kunstverein Konstanz
• 1977 Photo experiments and light kinetics 1936–1976 , Vaduz, Center for Art
• 1979 Early photo experiments and color photograms , Osthaus Museum Hagen
• 1981 Early Experiments: Photographs 1929–1946 , Berlin, Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design
• 1983 Early photo experiments , Houston / Texas, Benteler Galleries
• 1984 Photographs and light objects , Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern
• 1997 Lichtbilder - Images of light: Marta Hoepffner - photo artist and teacher , Hofheim am Taunus, City Museum

Participation in exhibitions

• 1948 1st major exhibition by the Stuttgart Photographic Society. The photography 1948. Visual photography, photography, picture report, photogram. Stuttgart, State Trade Museum
• 1949 2ème Foire. Exposition de la Photo et du Cinéma d'Amateur. Exhibition of the photo cinema industry in 1949. Neustadt ad Haardt
• 1950–1958 Cologne, Photokina picture shows
• 1951 Subjective photography. International exhibition of modern photography. Saarbrücken, State School for Arts and Crafts
• 1967 The magic of light. Recklinghausen art gallery
• 1969 7 contributions to German contemporary art. Osthaus Museum Hagen
• 1980 La photographie expérimentale allemand entre 1918 et 1940. Paris, Center Pompidou
• 1980 The Imaginary Photo Museum. Cologne, art gallery
• 1980 Avant-Garde Photography in Germany 1919 - 1939. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• 1983 photograms. Munich, Photo Museum in the Munich City Museum
• 1984 The nude photo. Views of the body in the photographic age. Munich, Photo Museum in the Munich City Museum
• 1985 The self-portrait. Lausanne, Musée cantonal des beaux-arts de Lausanne and Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein
• 1987 German photographer. Pioneer of German contemporary photography. Cologne, Museum Ludwig / Agfa Photo Historama
• 1987 Staging the Self. Self-Portrait Photography 1940-1980. London, National Portrait Gallery
• 1988 structure and gesture. Informal painting and subjective photography in German art of the 50s. Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum
• 1989 The photo as an autonomous image. Experimental design 1839–1989. Bielefeld, Kunsthalle and Munich, Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts
• 1989 subjective photography. The German contribution 1948 - 1963. Stuttgart, Institute for Foreign Relations
• 1990 photogram. Zurich, Kunsthaus
• 1997 German photography. Power of a medium 1870 - 1970. Bonn, art and exhibition hall of the Federal Republic of Germany

Posthumous exhibitions

• 2000 Fashion, Body, Fashion: Photographs of a Century , Hamburg, Museum for Art and Industry
• 2002 The second face: metamorphoses of the photographic portrait , Munich, Deutsches Museum
• 2003 Photography in the Pfalz I , Kaiserslautern, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern
• 2007 The Heartbeat of Fashion: Works from the FC Gundlach Collection , Hamburg, Haus der Photographie / Deichtorhallen
• 2009 Nude Visions - 150 Years of Body Images in Photographs , Munich, Munich City Museum - Photography Collection
• 2019 Paths to Abstraction - Marta Hoepffner and Willi Baumeister , Friedrichshafen, Zeppelin Museum

literature

• Marta Hoepffner: Surging waves, towering peaks , Frankfurt / Main 1946
• Marta Hoepffner: Photographs and light objects . Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern (exhibition catalog). Kaiserslautern 1984
• Wolfgang Kermer : Willi Baumeister: Typography and advertising design. Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1989 ISBN 3-89322-145-X
• Marta Hoepffner: Photo artist and teacher. Lichtbilder - Bilder des Lichts (exhibition catalog), Ed .: Eva Scheid on behalf of the City Council of Hofheim am Taunus - Cultural Office / City Museum, 1997 ISBN 3-933735-04-1
• Ludger Derenthal: Pictures of the rubble and construction years: Photography in dividing Germany , Marburg 1999 ISBN 3-89445-249-8
• JA Schmoll called Eisenwerth : 'subjective photography'. The German contribution 1948–1963 . Institute for Foreign Relations , 3rd edition Stuttgart 2004

Web links

Commons : Marta Hoepffner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Marta Hoepffner in the ifa database
• Marta Hoepffner Prize for Photography
• City Museum Hofheim am Taunus
• Photos by Marta Hoepffner, with a short biography and links
• Report Marta Hoepffner: My studies at the Frankfurt art school

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography at 'Stadtmuseum Hofheim'
2. ↑ Self-testimony Marta Hoepffner "My studies at the Frankfurt art school" in: Wolfgang Kermer : Der Schöpferische Winkel: Willi Baumeister's educational activity. Contributions to the history of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart , ed. by Wolfgang Kermer, Vol. 7. Ostfildern-Ruit, Edition Cantz, 1992, ISBN 3-89322-420-3 , pp. 178-179
3. ↑ Marta Hoepffner. Photographs and light objects. Exhibition catalog Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, 1984, p. 50
4. ^ Exhibition of the Zeppelin Museum