Otto Keil

Otto Keil (born February 16, 1905 in Gotha ; † November 20, 1984 in Sonneberg ) was a German visual artist and art teacher .

Life

Otto Keil spent his childhood in Gotha, where he attended elementary school from 1911 to 1919 . His talent for drawing was recognized at school, so that his parents enabled him to attend the arts and crafts school in Erfurt . At the arts and crafts school he learned modeling with plastic material from Carl Melville . In 1923 he began a one-year training as a wood sculptor in Gotha and studied from 1924 to 1928 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden . After graduating, he worked as a freelance artist in Gotha. Through exhibitions in Thuringia, contacts to the porcelain industry and the State Ceramic College in Lichte arose . First he started in Lichte as a teacher for drawing and modeling. Fritz Klee became aware of him through the cooperation with the technical school in Selb, who encouraged him and deepened his interest in porcelain art. In 1931 Otto Keil was appointed director of the technical school in Lichte. In addition to his teaching activities, he also worked as a freelancer and took on orders from the Lorenz Hutschenreuther porcelain factory and the Meissen porcelain factory . In 1935 he went on a study trip to Italy . When Karl Staudinger resigned as director of the Sonneberg Industrial School in 1938 , he took over his position and continued to run the school while maintaining the artistic and art-pedagogical orientation that was shaped by Staudinger. Through his work in Sonneberg Otto Keil, who was friends with the sculptor Carl Melville, who lived in Sonneberg, won the professional recognition and friendship of Staudinger. In 1939 Otto Keil visited Italy on a second study trip. He could not prevent the decline of the Sonneberg industrial school during World War II. In 1944 the school was closed and Otto Keil stayed in Sonneberg as a freelance artist. After the war he participated in the founding of the Kulturbund in Thuringia and in 1950 became the district chairman of the visual arts section . In this position he remained connected to the former Sonneberg Industrial School , which had developed into a technical school for applied arts under the direction of Hans Döbrich after the war , and the artists who emerged from it, such as Werner Stötzer , Gerhard Rommel or Franz Kürschner as sponsors. In 1950 he organized the first art exhibition in Sonneberg after the war. In 1953 he became director of the German Toy Museum and in the same year married the sculptor Inge Czechne. As director of the museum, Otto Keil was particularly busy after August 13, 1961, when Sonneberg was in the restricted area until 1972 . The toy museum was no longer free for foreign visitors, but only accessible with a pass and was therefore constantly threatened with closure. With great commitment and many presentations and exhibitions at home and abroad, he succeeded in maintaining the Sonneberg location against all threats from GDR institutions at the district and state level. In 1972, Sonneberg was spun off from the restricted area and Otto Keil was able to calmly retire as director of the German Toy Museum. As a pensioner, he resumed his work as a freelance artist. Otto Keil died in 1984 three years after his wife Inge in Sonneberg.

The city of Sonneberg honors Otto Keil by keeping the memory of him alive in the citizenship with Otto-Keil-Straße.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Otto Keil, Galerie Notwehr Sonneberg ( Memento of the original from February 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Festschrift for the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Sonneberg Industrial School
3. ^ Design in the GDR, a project of the Foundation for Industrial and Everyday Culture: University of Applied Arts Sonneberg