Otto Meyer-Amden

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Meyer-Amden (born February 20, 1885 as Otto Meyer in Bern ; died January 15, 1933 in Zurich ) was a Swiss painter and graphic artist . The artist himself never used the suffix -Amden . So he always signed letters with Otto Meyer .

Life

Youth and education

Otto Meyer comes from a family in Bern and grew up in a financially modest family. After the early death of his mother in 1888, he was the youngest of six children to live with foster parents and spent his childhood and youth from 1892 to 1900 in the orphanage on today's Waisenhausplatz , a boarding school for Bernburgers (Bern patricians) in Bern. He trained as a lithographer from 1901 to 1903 in Bern and from 1903 to 1906 in Zurich . During this time he painted symbolist watercolors . At the same time he attended the evening classes at the arts and crafts school in Zurich, where he met Hermann Huber in 1904 . Over the next two decades, they developed an intense pen friendship.

From 1906 to 1907 Meyer studied at the art academy in Munich , where he lived with his brother Ernst. In the years 1907 to 1908 he moved to the Stuttgart Art Academy , where he was Adolf Hölzel's master student from 1909 . In Stuttgart he made friends with Oskar Schlemmer , Willi Baumeister , Alfred Heinrich Pellegrini and other artists. He had a lifelong friendship with Oskar Schemmer. Meyer occupied himself intensively, among other things, with reading Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray .

In 1907 he went on study trips to Strasbourg and Paris , where he was particularly impressed by the art of Paul Cézanne .

Amden

Amden landscape (1913)

In 1912 he received an invitation to Amden in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland by the artists Willi Baumeister and Hermann Huber that take place there in two empty houses, builder's house in Schwanden , Huber's house in Faren had settled . The houses were empty. Previously they had been inhabited by Joshua Klein's life reform group, the so-called Grappenhof. Meyer moved to Huber, who left the house to him in 1913 and left. After some disputes between Baumeister and Meyer, Baumeister also moved away from Amden and Meyer remained alone in Amden until 1928. He lived there secluded in the old farmhouse Im Faren . He wrote an intensive diary, especially from 1913 to 1915, and studied the Bible.

In the years 1915 to 1918 Meyer drew dark-tone graphite drawings. He used a technique known from Georges Seurat . In 1923 he designed a round glass picture for the sermon room of the Zwinglihaus in Zurich- Wiedikon . In 1922 he met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Zurich and became friends with him. In 1925 Meyer was involved with eight works in the "Great Swiss Art Exhibition" in Karlsruhe .

Zurich

In 1929 Meyer participated with twelve works in the exhibition "Abstract and Surrealist Painting and Sculpture" at the Kunsthaus Zürich . From 1928 until shortly before his death - his last years were marked by a serious illness - in 1933 Otto Meyer-Amden was a teacher of device drawing at the Zurich School of Applied Arts.

Otto Meyer, who called himself Meyer-Amden in connection with the place that was so important to him , left only about 500 paintings and drawings. There are many abstract figure pictures with lyrical expressions of mood and religious-symbolic representations, numerous boarding school scenes, youth nudes, street scenes from Zurich and watercolors with symbolic linear-geometric signs that characterize his work. Meyer's confession to his homosexuality can be proven for the significance of his countless youth acts. Although Meyer did not work non-representationally, he is considered an important forerunner of abstract painting in Switzerland. Above all, however, his influence on Oskar Schlemmer should not be underestimated. Works by Otto Meyer-Amden were shown at documenta 1 (1955) and documenta III (1964) in Kassel .

He found his final resting place in the Rehalp cemetery in Zurich . His tomb was lifted.

exhibition

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eletto: Correspondence between Mayer and Huber. Retrieved November 17, 2019 .
  2. ^ Roman Kurzmeyer: Viereck and Kosmos. Artists, life reformers, occultists, spiritualists in Amden 1910-1912. Max Nopper, Joshua Klein, Fidus, Otto Meyer-Amden . Zurich 1999.
  3. ↑ a b Spanke, Daniel .: Constructed Apollo. : Willi Baumeister's Apollo Pictures and the New Man by Otto Meyer-Amden and Oskar Schlemmer . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-07022-6 .
  4. ↑ Anita Haldemann: Otto Meyer-Amden: The very natural theme of the youth . In: Kunstmuseum Basel (ed.): Otto Meyer-Amden - Oskar Schlemmer . Basel 2007, p. 17, 21-22 .
  5. ↑ Kunstmuseum Basel (ed.): Otto Meyer-Amden - Oskar Schlemmer . Basel 2007.
  6. ↑ Renate Ammann: Otto Meyer-Amden, 1912–2012. Retrieved November 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer-Amden, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1933
Place of death Zurich