Otto Freundlich

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Composition , 1911
My sky is red , 1933, Musée National d'Art Moderne , Paris
Composition , 1930

Otto Freundlich (born July 10, 1878 in Stolp , Pomerania ; died presumably on March 9/10, 1943 in the Lublin-Majdanek or Sobibor concentration camps ) was a German painter and sculptor as well as the author of art theoretical and philosophical writings. Freundlich was one of the first representatives of abstract art . He lived in France with one break from 1908 and after being denounced as a Jew was deported to an extermination camp in 1943 and murdered there.

Life

Otto Freundlich was born in 1878 as the son of the shipping company owner Emil Freundlich. From 1888 to 1892 he attended high school, but dropped out prematurely. After completing a commercial apprenticeship and working in his brother's timber trade in Hamburg, he made up his Abitur by 1901.

Freundlich first began to study dentistry, then from 1902 he studied art history for three semesters , among others with Heinrich Wölfflin , heard music theory and philosophy in Munich and Berlin and published his first articles in magazines. During a study trip to Florence in the winter of 1906/1907, he recognized sculpture and painting as his strongest talents and from 1907 took private art lessons in Berlin with Lothar von Kunowski and Lovis Corinth (1907-1908). He studied sculpture with Arthur Lewin-Funcke .

In 1908 he went to Paris and lived in the Bateau-Lavoir on Montmartre under the same roof with the then young Pablo Picasso , with Georges Braque and others. Here he found his personal "figural - constructivist style with a symbolist character". He participated in exhibitions such as the Berlin Secession in 1909 and 1910, the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne in 1912 . In 1911 he created his first abstract compositions. In 1913 he was represented at the exhibition First German Autumn Salon . In the spring of 1914 he moved into a studio in the north tower of Chartres Cathedral , where he studied medieval stained glass.

Freundlich returned to Germany shortly before the start of the First World War and became a medical soldier with the Cologne-Deutz cuirassiers . In 1916/17 he joined the anti-war movement. He moved into a shared studio with Hanns Bolz in Cologne's Gereonshaus . Both were close friends from Paris times. In the spring of 1918 he was dismissed from military service due to hearing loss. After the 1918 revolution , Freundlich was one of the founding members of the November Group . He worked in the Berlin art work council and was a member of the German Werkbund . In 1919 he organized the first Cologne Dada exhibition together with Max Ernst and Johannes Theodor Baargeld . Walter Gropius ' attempt to win Freundlich as a teacher for the Bauhaus failed due to resistance from the faculty.

Bronze casting of the sculpture Ascension in Münster

In 1924 the company moved to Paris. In 1929 he wrote the extensive text "The world that creates itself" and the sculpture Ascension in plaster. During his time in Paris, Freundlich was involved in several exhibitions, both in Paris and in Zurich, Basel, Amsterdam and Cologne. From 1930 the German artist Jeanne (Hannah) Kosnick-Kloss was his partner. During this time he also developed his tectonically structured color field painting . In 1931, Freundlich joined the newly founded artist organization Abstraction-Création . In 1934 the text "The Paths of Abstract Art" was written, in 1935 "Confessions of a Revolutionary Painter". With his partner he became a member of the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Revoloutionnaires , ran a small art school with her ("Le Mur") and also worked with her on joint works.

During the time of National Socialism , Freundlich was considered a “degenerate artist” , his works were removed from museums in Germany, and his sculpture Großer Kopf became part of the exhibition “Degenerate Art” . (see section Big Head / The New Man ).

At the beginning of the Second World War , Otto Freundlich was interned in France as a German , although he was a Jew and threatened Nazi persecution, first in the Paris assembly camp in the Colombes stadium , then in Blois and the nearby Francillon-par-Villebarou. Try u. a. von Auguste Herbin and Berthe Weill , and later Paul Westheim as well , to obtain his release failed. At the beginning of 1940 he was interned one after the other in the Marolles , Fossé and Cepoy camps, was then temporarily released in February of that year and tried again for his naturalization in France. A few months later he was interned again, this time in the Buffalo Stadium in Paris , from where he was brought to Bassens . After he was let go there in June 1940, he found accommodation in the Hotel Galamus in the Pyrenees village of Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet in the area of ​​the Vichy regime - albeit under house arrest and police control. There, Jeanne Kosnick-Kloss rejoined him in September. Attempts to get to the United States have failed. In December 1942 he tried to escape the ongoing deportation of Jews by retreating to the neighboring village of Saint-Martin-de-Fenouillet , where a peasant family hid him. When, in February 1943, after an attack on German officers, the French police began to make more arrests, Otto Freundlich was denounced as a Jew by a village neighbor and arrested on February 23, 1943. After a stopover in the Gurs camp and the Drancy assembly camp near Paris, he was deported to Poland in a transport of around 1,000 Jews. He was probably murdered on the way there or in the Sobibor extermination camp , where the train arrived on March 10th. A more precise date of death cannot be proven.

plant

Ideal of a social fabric

Otto Freundlich advocated the idea of ​​a humanistically committed artistic creation. His compositions formulate and represent the ideal of a social structure in which the individual is in dialogue with the whole. In 1938 Freundlich made his socio-artistic claim clear in the text The Pictorial Space : Art and society are based on a common ethical foundation. According to Freundlich, it is a language that unites all people and is expressed particularly through painting, sculpture and architecture. Works of art are intended to remind people that mankind has the task of becoming a social unit.

Freundlich's utopia becomes visually tangible in his paintings and gouaches through the deliberately conceived harmony of form and color - the “openness of all surfaces in the picture to one another”. In the sculptural work the claim becomes explicit: the title of his first monumental sculpture Ascension (1929) refers to the idea of ​​ascent - the potential ascent of a disadvantaged class , the upswing of the spirit and the development of the human being. Your own perception opens up for the common task of rethinking the social. Otto Freundlich " anticipated" - according to Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg - "figures of thought of the social determination of the work of art of the 1960s in Josef Beuys ".

Freundlich developed the idea of ​​a "street of sculptures Paris-Moscow" that unites people - une voie de la fraternité humaine, une voie de la solidarité humaine en souvenir de la liberation: "Path of human brotherhood, path of human solidarity in memory of liberation" (see “ Road of Peace ”).

Mosaic The Birth of Man (1919) in the Cologne Opera House

An approximately 2 × 3 m mosaic The Birth of Man , which Otto Freundlich created for Josef Feinhals in 1919 , has been in the foyer of the Cologne Opera since 1954 .

Big head / The new person

In 1912 Otto Freundlich created the sculpture Big Head . The 139 centimeter high plaster figure is reminiscent of the stone heads of Easter Island and symbolized the hoped-for “spiritual new beginning” of the pre-war period. In 1930, the then director Max Sauerlandt bought the work for the Museum of Art and Crafts in Hamburg.

Large head on the title page of the 1937 exhibition guide

In 1937 Freundlich's sculpture was confiscated during the Nazi campaign “ Degenerate Art ”. It was presented in the exhibition of the same name in Munich and also used on the title page of the exhibition catalog. The photographic image shows the head distorted in perspective from a viewing direction from below. During the exhibition's journey through other cities, the sculpture got lost and has since been considered lost, it was probably destroyed. When preparing a retrospective in 2017, when comparing historical photographs, it was discovered that they had been replaced by a falsifying replica, which now "looked like an illustration of the Nazi ideas of 'degenerate art'". The whereabouts of the replica is also unclear.

The exhibition and the press wrote about the sculpture that Otto Freundlich was showing his idea of ​​the “new man” here. As a result, this term, which was meant to be pejorative in the context of “degenerate art”, was adopted as the title of the work, although it can be proven that Freundlich always only wrote about the Great Head . Until recently, the propaganda title The New Man was common.

In the Jewish Museum Berlin , a representative for Otto Freundlich's sculpture, a “black spot” ( Gallery of the Missing ), is on display as a symbol of the loss and destruction of cultural and works of art by National Socialism .

Fonts

in lifetime
  • The world that creates itself. 1929.
  • A German painter in Paris. 1930.
  • The ways of abstract art. 1934
  • Confessions of a Revolutionary Painter. 1935
  • Guidelines for Teaching the Visual Arts. 1935.
  • The pictorial space. 1938.
posthumously
  • Uli Bohnen: Otto Freundlich. Fonts. A pioneer of non-representational art. With contributions by Uli Bohnen and Andreas Reidemeister, Dumont Publishing House, Ostfildern 1986, ISBN 978-3-7701-1263-0
  • Günter Aust : Otto Freundlich 1878–1943. From letters and essays. Galerie der Spiegel, Cologne undated (1960).

reception

Museums

  • The Musée Tavet-Delacour in Pontoise near Paris shows an extensive collection of works by Otto Freundlich and is home to the Association les amis de Jeanne et Otto Freundlich foundation .

Exhibitions

  • In 1964, Freundlich's works were exhibited posthumously at documenta III in Kassel.
  • In 2006, the painter Martin Noël organized the exhibition “Hommage à Otto Freundlich” in the Mies van der Rohe house in Berlin. In 2007 the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich showed "Otto Freundlich - Images of a Social Utopia". In 2008, the Central Pomeranian Museum in Freundlich's native town of Slupsk (Poland) presented “Otto Freundlich - 1878–1943 Artysta ze Słupska / An artist from Stolp”.
  • From February 18 to May 14, 2017, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne presented the exhibition “Otto Freundlich. Cosmic Communism ”. From June 10 to September 10, 2017, it was on view at the Kunstmuseum Basel .
  • Museum Ludwig: “Otto Freundlich. Cosmic Communism "
  • Otto Freundlich - Cosmic Communism-9655.jpg
  • Otto Freundlich - Cosmic Communism-9670.jpg
  • Otto Freundlich - Cosmic Communism-9683.jpg
  • Otto Freundlich - Cosmic Communism-9709.jpg

Art project "Street of Peace"

In 1971 the artist Leo Kornbrust took up Freundlich's idea and initiated the first street of sculptures in Saarland. The Saarland sculptor Paul Schneider initiated a second sculpture street in Saarland in 1985 (“ Stones on the Border ”), which was also dedicated to Freundlich's idea. This street now includes around 30 sculptures by international artists. In 1999, after a suggestion by the artist Gerd Winner , the Salzgitter-Bad tourist office began realizing a further sculpture trail as a tribute to Otto Freundlich 1878–1943 , which now (2006) shows seven large-format steel sculptures by renowned international artists. In the meantime, many other places and initiatives are involved in a “ Road of Peace ” across Europe.

literature

  • Dörte Zbikowski: Kindly, Otto . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 44, Saur, Munich a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-598-22784-1 , pp. 494-496.
  • Günter Aust : Otto Freundlich . DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1960.
  • Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg (ed.): Otto Freundlich (1878–1943). Monograph with documentation and catalog raisonné. Exhibition catalog with contributions by Uli Bohnen , Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg, Andrèi B. Nakov. Drouin / Maillet / Kaniel, Bonn 1978, ISBN 3-7927-0413-7 .
  • Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg: Otto Freundlich. Ascension. Instruction to utopia . Fischer feat, Frankfurt / M. 1987, ISBN 3-596-23943-5 .
  • Musée départemental de Rochechouart / Association Les Amis de Jeanne et Otto Freundlich (ed.): Otto Freundlich . With contributions by Alain Bonfand, Christophe Duvivier, Edda Maillet, Jerôme Serri, Guy Tossato. Exhibition cat. Rochechouart 1988, ISBN 2-7291-0313-9 .
  • Otto Freundlich et ses Amis . Exhibition catalog. Pontoise 1993.
  • Otto Freundlich. A pioneer of abstract art. With contributions by Uli Bohnen, Susanne Deicher, Lorenz Dittmann, Christophe Duvivier, Erich Franz, Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg, Gerhard Leistner , Karena Lütge, Thorsten Rodieck and Rita Wildegans. Exhibition catalog. Regensburg / Osnabrück 1994, ISBN 3-89188-068-5 .
  • Karena Lütge: In painting, matter becomes spirit. Otto Freundlich between Art Nouveau, Expressionism and Constructivism . Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-932124-27-8 .
  • Carl Gneist, u. a .: Standpunkte der Ethik , 2000, ISBN 3-506-25000-0
  • Sebastian Giesen, Ulrich Luckhardt, Rüdiger Joppien : Freundlich, Gangolf, Kogan - three artists' fates . Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-9807916-9-4
  • Joel Mettay: The lost track. Looking for Otto Freundlich . Wallstein, 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244-970-6
  • Jürgen Neumann: From Wörschweiler to New York. Film by Gabi Heleen Bollinger received an award at an international festival in the US metropolis. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , 24./25. December 2011, p. C4
  • Julia Friedrich (Ed.): Otto Freundlich - Cosmic Communism . Catalog for the exhibition at Museum Ludwig February 18 to May 14, 2017. Prestel Verlag 2017. ISBN 978-3-7913-5639-6 .

documentary

Monument to Otto Freundlich in St. Wendel , 1988

Web links

Commons : Otto Freundlich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Otto Freundlich  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b biography and exhibitions . In: Julia Friedrich (Ed.): Otto Freundlich. Cosmic communism . Prestel, Munich, London, New York 2017, ISBN 978-3-7913-5640-2 , pp. 314-315 .
  2. ↑ Helmut Mayer: Exhibition “Art in War” The canvas as the last vanishing point ( memento from April 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), faz.net, November 14, 2012
    According to the film That only works slowly. Film about Otto Freundlich, Leo Kornbrust and the “Strasse des Friedens” in Sobibor , based on a found document about the transport concerned, in which Otto Freundlich is named.
  3. ^ Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg : Otto Freundlich. Ascension. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 3-596-23943-5 , pp. 2 and 24
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg : Otto Freundlich. Ascension. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 3-596-23943-5 , pp. 91-93
  5. ↑ Cat. For the 15th European Art Exhibition in Berlin 1977, p. 50
  6. ↑ He was stripped of his German citizenship as a Jew. He was therefore stateless .
  7. ↑ Otto Freundlich: Picasso, on his 50th birthday , in: Uli Bohnen: Otto Freundlich. Writings , 1986, quoted from: Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg : Otto Freundlich. Ascension. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 3-596-23943-5 , pp. 51 and 83
  8. ^ Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg : Otto Freundlich. Ascension. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 3-596-23943-5 , p. 33
  9. ↑ Kölnische Rundschau: Complicated transport. Artwork moves from the opera to the Museum Ludwig on January 20, 2017, accessed on February 12, 2017
  10. ↑ Gerhard Kolberg (ed.), Helga Behn: The Expressionists; from departure to ostracism . (Catalog for the exhibition), Verlag Ostfildern-Ruit near Stuttgart, Hatje, 1996, p. 285.
  11. ↑ koeln-insight.tv
  12. ^ Photograph of the sculpture in the Berlin exhibition
  13. ↑ Mandy Wignanek: Fake Icon. The big head in the propaganda exhibition Degenerate Art. In: Julia Friedrich (Ed.): Otto Freundlich - Cosmic Communism . Prestel Verlag 2017, pp. 206–215. ISBN 978-3-7913-5639-6 .
  14. ^ This and the following after: Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg : Otto Freundlich. Ascension. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 3-596-23943-5 , pp. 91-93.
  15. ↑ Homepage Musée Tavet-Delacour ( Memento of the original of April 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ville-pontoise.fr
  16. ↑ fwpn.org.pl
  17. ^ Announcement on the website of the Museum Ludwig
  18. ^ In the firmament of purest colors in FAZ from February 23, 2017, page 11
  19. ↑ skulpturenweg-salzgitter-bad.de
personal data
SURNAME Kind, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Stolp , Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1943 or March 10, 1943
Place of death Lublin-Majdanek or Sobibor concentration camps