Otto Stelzer

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Otto Stelzer and his wife Gerda, née Millies

Julius Otto Stelzer (born October 24, 1914 in Dresden ; † January 2, 1970 in Hamburg ) was professor of art history at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK) and at Iowa State University .

Life

Otto Stelzer studied art history , archeology , German and philosophy in Marburg, Munich, Oslo and Berlin. In 1939 he did his doctorate with Wilhelm Pinder at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin with the subject "Nature and transformation of the tectonic structure of surface (wall) and space". He was a soldier in World War II and a prisoner of war with the Allies. In 1941 he married the archaeologist Gudrun Seefeldt (1916 - approx. 1999) in Berlin , with whom he had three children. After 1946 he made a career as a cultural advisor in the arts and culture of Lower Saxony. a. in Braunschweig. Two daughters from his marriage to Gudrun Seefeldt also live there. In 1946 he was appointed to the HFBK in Hamburg.

As a young man Otto Stelzer lived in Norway for a long time, traveled the Norwegian coasts north of Tromsø and had contacts with artists there and was known as Per . "Per" initiated the Northern Norway painting trips twice for his brother-in-law, the painter Uwe Millies / Amud Millies. Otto Stelzer taught art history as a full professor at the HFBK in Hamburg from 1955 to 1967. He left the HFBK in 1967 because of a visiting professorship at the Art Faculty of the University of the US state of Iowa, where he taught the history of modern and abstract art. With him, his student Gerda Millies went to the USA, along with her collection of works of art. He was able to organize solo exhibitions there for Millie's in Los Angeles, Chicago and Iowa. In 1968 Otto Stelzer married Gerda Millies.

Act

Through his textbooks, Stelzer was style and opinion-forming for generations of art teachers. With his theses and analyzes on contemporary art and craft education in schools of all kinds, he had a dominant position in terms of taste formation, acceptance and evaluation of modernity .

As an examiner for art educators and craftsmen at schools and at art colleges, Stelzer had an influence on the appointment criteria of university teachers with his standards. The appointment of Walter Arno Beckman , Emil Schumacher , Tadeusz Kantor to the HFBK Hamburg would have been unthinkable without Stelzer's approval.

Works (selection)

  • Art and photography. Contacts, influences, effects , Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1978 (edited with Jörg Howe) ISBN 3492023525 .
  • Braunschweig ( Deutsche Lande - German Art ), Deutscher Kunstverlag, Muenchen 1965.
  • From the bird's eye view, art and photography , Munich 1966,.
  • Helmstedt and the country around the Elm , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Muenchen 1954.
  • Goethe and the fine arts , Vieweg-Verlag, Braunschweig 1949.
  • The prehistory of abstract art , R.Piper, Muenchen 1964.
  • Paula Modersohn-Becker , Rembrandt, 1958

literature

  • Otto Jehle: Otto Stelzer - To abstraction before abstraction . In: Art History. Texts for discussion, 2010-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schnell & Steiner (ed.): Das Münster . tape 23 , 1970, pp. 70 .
  2. ↑ International Publications Service: Who's who in Europe . Editions Servi-Tech, S. 2432 ( google.de [accessed on September 21, 2018]).
  3. ^ Klaus Timm, Gerda Stelzer, artist and friend , Hamburg 2011
  4. ↑ http://www.kunstgeschichte-ejournal.net/kommentare/2010/jehle/
personal data
SURNAME Stelzer, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stelzer, Julius Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art scholar
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1970
Place of death Hamburg