Otto Friedrich Weber

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Otto Friedrich Weber (born December 7, 1890 in Elberfeld , † January 21, 1957 in Wuppertal ) was a German painter .

Life

Otto Friedrich Weber was born as the son of a master locksmith in Elberfeld, Kölner Strasse 35, and was supposed to learn his father's craft. In the secondary school he attended, his drawing teacher Bernhard Müller noticed the boy's artistic talent. On his recommendation, his father let him attend the Werkkunstschule in Wuppertal, where Max Bernuth was his teacher. Weber traveled through Westphalia and the Waldecker Land with his friend Gert Wollheim .

The first drawings were bought by Baron August von der Heydt , Eduard von der Heydt's father , who made it possible for the budding artist to attend the painting class at the Dresden Academy. In Munich Weber became a student of Hermann Urban , where he learned the wax color technique, which was still new at the time.

A commissioned work took Weber, who accompanied the landscape painter Edmund Steppes on a trip through southern Germany to Paris , where he was the only German artist to be allowed to exhibit in the autumn salons of 1911 and 1913. He lived with numerous Cubist artists in the artist house La Ruche in Passage de Dantzig and, like his compatriot Arno Breker, was friends with the young Pablo Picasso .

In 1914 Weber went to Spain, where he refused to comply with the draft for military service and on February 19, 1916 married Maria Elisabeth Prestel (1886–1965). This marriage resulted in two children. In Barcelona he joined the artist colony around Robert Delaunay , who had also refused military service and influenced Weber's work. Weber was able to exhibit here in February 1915 in the Josep Dalmau gallery, and later in Madrid and Toledo; He made his living drawing caricatures for the Spanish press.

In 1919 Weber and his family returned to Elberfeld, where Edmund Becher's gallery Raumkunst offered him exhibition opportunities. In 1927 he was back in Paris, where he designed a mural on behalf of the city of Wuppertal. The newspaper Le Soir described it as "le plus grand peintre allemand du moment".

During the Nazi era, Weber was banned from traveling, which made work almost impossible for him, who spent several months of the year doing preliminary studies in Mediterranean countries. His pictures, including Die Schreitende , were removed from museums, his studios destroyed in the phosphorus attack on Wuppertal in 1943 , which meant that a considerable part of his life's work was lost. Weber experienced the end of the war in Eindhoven .

A call for donations gave the artist the opportunity to travel to Spain for the last time in 1956; shortly after his return he died in his apartment at Goebenstrasse 20.

Otto Friedrich Weber was a member of the Rhenish Secession , the Bergische Kunstgenossenschaft and the Düsseldorfer Malkastens . The Wuppertal Von der Heydt Museum dedicated a memorial exhibition to him from September 14 to October 12, 1958.

Tool knowledge

In 1928 Otto Friedrich Weber created the figurative mural in the catalog room of the Wuppertal City Library in the format 7 m × 1.65 m . Several of his works are in the Von der Heydt Museum.

During the war years Otto Friedrich Weber portrayed the merchant Walter Anton Petersen, his wife Charlotte and daughter Margarete, among others. These paintings are privately owned by the Petersen family.

literature

  • Marie-Luise Baum: Otto Friedrich Weber . In: Wuppertal biographies. 5th episode, Born Verlag, Wuppertal 1965 (contributions to the history and local history of the Wuppertal, vol. 11), pp. 85–92.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Pierre Sanchez: Dictionnaire du Salon d'Automne. Repertoire des exposants et liste des œuvres présentees 1903–1940. Vol. 3, L'échelle de Jacob, Dijon 2006, p. 1392.
  2. ↑ See William H. Robinson, Jordi Falgàs, Carmen Belen Lord: Barcelona and modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Míro, Dali , Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland 2006, p. 319.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Marie Luise Baum: Otto Friedrich Weber (see section Literature ), p. 91.
  4. ↑ See Marianne Bernhard, Klaus P. Rogner (ed.): Lost works of painting. In Germany in the period from 1939 to 1945 destroyed and lost paintings from museums and galleries. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1965.
  5. ↑ See Susanne Anna / Annette Baumeister (eds.): Das Junge Rheinland. Forerunner-friends-successor, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006, p. 164.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Otto Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weber, Otto F.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1957
Place of death Wuppertal