Rolf Nesch
Rolf Nesch actually: Emil Rudolf Nesch (born January 7, 1893 in Oberesslingen am Neckar , † October 27, 1975 in Oslo ) was a German-Norwegian painter and graphic artist .
Life
After an apprenticeship as a decorative painter and visiting the Kgl. Kunstgewerbeschule in Stuttgart (1909–1912) he came to Dresden in 1912 and worked as a painter's journeyman. Here he was accepted into the academy. During the war he had to interrupt his studies and was taken prisoner by the English.
In 1919 he resumed his studies with Oskar Kokoschka in Dresden and got a master's atelier. Rolf Nesch was a member of the artist group Die Schaffenden . In 1924 he visited Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos . Kirchner had a great stylistic and technical influence on Rolf Nesch.
meaning
By chance, Rolf Nesch discovered in 1925 the light effects that were created when an etching plate was etched through in print and from then on used this consciously as an artistic process.
In 1929 Rolf Nesch settled in Hamburg and became a member of the Hamburg Secession . He later destroyed the pictures from this time.
When Max Sauerlandt , then director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, gave him the Senate commission to portray Karl Muck and his orchestra in 1931 , after numerous preparatory work he created a series of etchings in which he used these etchings.
325 documents relating to the exchange of ideas between him and the des Arts family between 1922 and 1973 are archived in the Warburg House in Hamburg .
Invention of metal printing
A year later he erased the series of works on the Hamburg bridges . For this purpose, he had partly sawed the plates into individual templates - a process to which Edvard Munch's woodcuts inspired him. And he combined letterpress and gravure printing by experimenting with wires and grids that he welded onto the printing plates.
With this he had also invented the technology of metal printing .
Material images
In 1933, the same year when the Hamburg Secession broke up in protest against the pressure exerted by the Nazis against secession artists of Jewish origin, Nesch emigrated to Norway . There he expanded the technology he had invented. He enriched the pictures with flotsam , pieces of glass, corks and other products in the direction of material pictures . Rolf Nesch tried to fuse the haptics and optics of the material and the design into a single unit.
In 1936 I made contact with the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, who also emigrated to Norway .
During the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, Nesch was to be drafted into military service in 1943. Due to a self-inflicted tram accident in which he sustained serious injuries, he escaped access by the Wehrmacht. As a result of the accident, paralysis and epileptic seizures occurred that never healed. He couldn't work for a while.
In 1946, Nesch received Norwegian citizenship. In 1950 he married the Norwegian actress Ragnhild Hald. A trip to New York followed.
Rolf Nesch will go down in the history of art in the 20th century as an innovator of graphic techniques. In this medium he achieved revolutionary developments that made completely new forms of artistic expression possible. In Norway he is considered one of the most important artists in the country.
Rolf Nesch was a member of the German Association of Artists . He took part in documenta 1 (1955), documenta II (1959), and also documenta III in 1964 in Kassel .
Significant works
- Landungsbrücken (canvas, 1933, Hamburg, Holthusen Collection)
- Elbchaussee (canvas, 1931, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum , Cologne )
- S. Marco (copper plates with pieces of metal, 1961, Stuttgart, Belser-Haus )
- St. Sebastian (copper plates with colored glass and marble, 1941–1943, Stuttgart, City Gallery)
- Lofoten fishermen pull nets (zinc plates with soldered-on zinc strips, some underlaid with brass, 1936–1937, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart )
- Karl Muck and his orchestra (etching cycle - metal print, graphic collection of the Hamburger Sparkasse, Hamburg)
- Hamburg bridges (etching cycle - metal printing, graphic collection of the Hamburger Sparkasse, Hamburg)
Honors
- 1953 Award of the plaque of honor of the city of Esslingen am Neckar
- 1955 Cit Prize for graphics on the III. Biennale of Sao Paulo
- 1956 Extraordinary member of the Academy of Arts (Berlin)
- 1958 Lichtwark Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg; 2nd prize at the Triennale for colored graphics in Grenchen / Switzerland
- 1959 Appointment as Professor hc by the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Education
- 1962 honorary member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg and the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart; Participation in the XXXI. Venice Biennale , Norwegian Pavilion
- 1965 Cornelius Prize of the City of Düsseldorf
- 1967 Canada Council Print Award, Vancouver Print International
- 1971 Culture Prize of the City of Oslo
- 1973 Prinz Eugen Medal , Stockholm ; Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav ; Henrik Steffens Prize from the FVS Foundation in Hamburg
Rolf Nesch Museum
The largest permanent exhibition of works by the German-born artist Rolf Nesch.
In 1951 Rolf Nesch moved to the Ragnhildrud farm in Ål (Norway) and lived there for the next 20 years. The Nesch Museum in Ål Kulturhus (Norway) opened in 1993.
The collection in the museum includes graphics , sculptures , paintings and material works and shows a representative selection of the artistic life work of Rolf Nesch, from 1961 until his death in 1975.
literature
- Helliesen, Sidsel and Sörensen, Bodil: The Complete Graphic Works, Milano / Oslo 2009
- Eivind Otto Hjelle: Rolf Nesch. Oslo 1998
- Eivind Otto Hjell: Nesch, Rolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 68 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Heinrich Kohlhaussen, Rolf Nesch , in: Der Kreis - magazine for artistic culture, Hamburg 1930, vol. 7, issue 11
- Max Sauerlandt, Muck , in: ibid., Vol. 8, issue 6
- Honorary member Professor Rolf Nesch has passed away. In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 7 / Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart / For the period from April 1, 1975 to May 31, 1976. Ed. Wolfgang Kermer . - Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, August 1976, p. 100
- Sidsel Helliesen, Med Rolf Nesch pa teaterturné til Finnmark, Oslo 1976
- Maike Bruhns : Rolf Nesch in Hamburg, graphics, paintings, sculptures , Hamburg 1993
- Maike Bruhns: Rolf Nesch - Evidence of an unusual artist's life in turbulent times , Merlin Verlag, Gifkendorf 1993, ISBN 978-3-926112-37-8
- Hermann-Josef Bunte , Rolf Nesch. Early graphics and Hamburg bridges , Galerie in der Haspa, Hamburg 1998
- Rolf Nesch (1893–1975), music and theater graphics , Galerie in der Haspa, Hamburg 2000
Web links
- Website about Rolf Nesch , created by the artist's biographer and experts from the Oslo National Gallery
- Rolf Nesch Museum in Ål (Norway)
- Literature by and about Rolf Nesch in the catalog of the German National Library
- Materials by and about Rolf Nesch in the documenta archive
Individual evidence
- ^ Full members of the German Association of Artists. In: kuenstlerbund.de. Archived from the original on November 10, 2013 ; accessed on April 9, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Nesch, Rolf |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Nesch, Emil Rudolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Norwegian painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 7, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Oberesslingen am Neckar |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 27, 1975 |
| Place of death | Oslo |