Otto Ulmer

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Otto Ulmer (born February 2, 1904 in Stuttgart ; † April 12, 1973 there ) was a German textile entrepreneur and painter .

life and work

Otto Ulmer attended the Dillmann Realgymnasium in Stuttgart. After graduating from the school, he trained as a textile merchant and in 1926 spent two years in the USA. After the death of his father in 1928, Ulmer took over the management of his father's textile wholesaler. Ulmer did military service from 1942 to 1945. After the end of the war, he rebuilt the destroyed textile company and the family house on Gänsheide in Stuttgart .

In addition to his job, painting was largely self-taught , after Ulmer had received private lessons from his drawing teacher at the grammar school for a while at the age of eleven. After the Second World War , Ulmer continued his artistic activity and initially devoted himself to landscape painting . Ulmer developed a preference for broken transitional tones and fine color nuances that give his painting a monochrome melancholy.

Ulmer's entrepreneurial activity only allowed him to work with art on weekends, so that, apart from taking painting lessons as a teenager, he remained autodidact throughout his life. Initially, he followed the tradition of Swabian open-air painting and painted in and around Stuttgart. In the 1950s, however, he made the transition from painting to collage . Ulmer now worked in the workshop of his house on Gänsheide and in the 1950s maintained contact with the informal artists' meeting at the Stuttgart Bubenbad, which had formed around Stuttgart artists like Willi Baumeister and collectors like the neurologist Ottomar Domnick . When composing the collages, Ulmer mainly used materials such as scraps of fabric, sackcloth, patches and rags that he knew from his professional life, whereby he basically never used new textiles, but only used textiles.

The further development of the assemblage and the objet trouvé in the mid-1960s seems logical and heralded Elmer's most intense creative phase. In 1965 he retired from the company and devoted himself entirely to art. Ulmer began to process used everyday objects, such as old screws, nails, stones, roof tiles, weathered pieces of wood and metal, into material images, using means of expression from Schwitters or Arp and the reinterpretation principle from Duchamp . Works such as For example, the “Homage to a rescued roof tile” (1972), a roof tile mounted on an inscribed canvas that Ulmer “rescued” from his parents' house that had been destroyed in the war. Some of the scribbled canvases are reminiscent of Twombly , with the inscriptions adding the symbolic to the work and not being used as an independent stylistic device.

While the processed objects were “taken out of the gutter”, the selected materials have a symbolism that can also be found in Beuys' works of the 1960s. Ulmer composed z. B. from the weathered wood of a church that he had brought back from a trip to Rüschlikon in Switzerland , the "Small House Altar" (1968). The condensation to simplicity gives the later works a serious, sometimes admonishing character that defies simple interpretation.

The commemorative exhibition in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in 1973 surprised the art world because Ulmer had remained shy of the public all his life. So wrote " Die Zeit ":

"An unusual process: all of a sudden, a nameless actor appears on the art scene, who at the first audition is characterized by his masterful mastery of his means."

Further exhibitions in museums and galleries followed over the next few decades.

Exhibitions

  • 2011/12 Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
  • 1998 “Willi Baumeister - Schoolchildren and Friends”, Dorn Gallery, Stuttgart
  • 1994 Kunsthaus Schaller, Stuttgart
  • 1986 “Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Baden-Württemberg”, Stuttgart City Gallery
  • 1985 Volksbank Zuffenhausen
  • 1981 MBART Gallery, Stuttgart
  • 1981 "Picture boxes and box pictures", traveling exhibition at the State Gallery in Stuttgart
  • 1978 Memorial exhibition, Galerie Landesgirokasse, Stuttgart
  • 1975 Ulmer Museum , Ulm
  • 1975 Kunsthaus Fischinger, Stuttgart
  • 1974 Municipal Gallery “The Ferry”, Salgau
  • 1974 South German objects, Behr gallery, Stuttgart
  • 1973 Memorial exhibition at the State Gallery in Stuttgart
  • 1967 "Collage 67", Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus , Munich
  • 1966 Kunsthaus Fischinger, Stuttgart
  • 1960 Bleichenbacher Gallery, Zurich
  • 1959 “Painters see Stuttgart” (competition), Städtische Sparkasse / Städtische Girokasse, Stuttgart

Works in museums and collections (selection)

  • Memorial (1969, dark red wooden panel, mounted on insulation board, with pebble stone hung up, 127 × 110 cm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart , inventory number DKM P 261 (plastic))
  • Track system (1963, charcoal, black chalk, colored pencils on raw white paper, 75 × 65 cm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart , inventory no. C 1979 / GL 2797, loan from the Stuttgart regional council, no.2679 (graphic collection))
  • Dotted (1967, 82 × 72 cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart , inventory no. V-0433)
  • Butterfly collage (1969, textiles on canvas, 115 × 105.5 cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart , loan from private collection)
  • Black Cross (1968, oil and paper on canvas, 134 × 113.5, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart , loan from private collection)
  • Peasant Wedding (1968, textiles and materials on sackcloth, 103 × 93 cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart , loan from private collection)
  • Newspaper collage (1968, oil, newspaper, paper on canvas, 105.5 × 115 cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart , loan from private collection)
  • Spiral collage (1967, collage, plucking on hardboard, 98 × 89 cm, LBBW collection )
  • Etui MB (1972, stroller wheel, sheet metal, insulation board, 51 × 30 × 8 cm, Sindelfingen City Gallery - Lütze Museum )
  • Agitation (1968, collage, 100 × 90 cm, Reinheimer Collection (dissolved in 2011))

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 30 years of the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation. Avant-garde in the Gänsheideviertel Stuttgart - Willi Baumeister and his circle ( Memento from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Websites of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, accessed on January 4, 2012
  2. ↑ Barbara Heuss-Czisch: In Material: Objects and Assemblages ... , 1986, illustration p. 106: “Homage to a rescued roof tile” (1972), roof tiles and candles on scribbled and stained canvas, on wood, 67 × 52 cm
  3. ^ Karin von Maur: Otto Ulmer. Collages and assemblages ... , 1974, p. 7
  4. ↑ Arnulf M. Wynen: Bildkästen und Kastenbilder , 1981, p. 65: "Kleiner Hausaltar" (1968), assemblage, wooden parts, stones and wire wreath on wood, on painted canvas, 77 × 59 × 8 cm
  5. ^ Günther Wirth: Art in the German Southwest ... , 1982, p. 150
  6. ^ Helmut Schneider: Art Calendar. Otto Ulmer . In: " Die Zeit " No. 52, December 21, 1973

literature

  • Jörg Kurz: Die Gänsheide, history and culture , Verlag im Ziegelhaus, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-925440-16-8
  • Cornelia Matz: Stuttgart in view: an exhibition of the Stuttgart City Archives in the forum of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg from 17.09. - 17.11.2002 , Hohenheim Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 978-3-89850-976-3 (= publications of the archive of the city of Stuttgart, volume 94)
  • Eugen Keuerleber; Brigitte Reinhardt: Art of the 19th and 20th centuries in Baden-Württemberg. 25 years of the City of Stuttgart Gallery in the Art Building , City of Stuttgart Gallery, Stuttgart 1986
  • Barbara Heuss-Czisch: In the material: Objects and assemblages from the 1960s in Stuttgart, November 27 , 1986 to January 18 , 1987 , Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart 1986
  • Günther Wirth: Art in the German Southwest from 1945 to the present , Hatje Verlag, 1982, ISBN 978-3-7757-0175-4
  • Arnulf M. Wynen: picture boxes and box pictures. An image form of modern object art , touring exhibition of the State Gallery Stuttgart, 1981
  • Wilhelm Gall: Painting of the 20th Century. Landesgirokasse collection , Kohlhammer: Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 978-3-17-005071-6
  • Helmut Heissenbüttel: Stuttgart Art in the 20th Century. Painting, sculpture, architecture , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1979, ISBN 978-3-421-02532-6
  • Wilhelm Gall: Otto Ulmer 1904–1973, exhibition May 29 - August 4, 1978 , Galerie Landesgirokasse, Stuttgart 1978
  • Karin von Maur : Otto Ulmer, collages and assemblages , exhibition catalog, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1974
  • Hermann Dannecker: The object maker Ulmer. Discovery of an artist in the Stuttgart State Gallery . In: " Schwäbische Zeitung ", January 3, 1974
  • Ulrich Rothermel: From waste to icons. Oil paintings and collages by Otto Ulmer in the Girokasse gallery . In: “ Stuttgarter Zeitung ”, June 7, 1973
  • Karin von Maur: Otto Ulmer . In: "here", Kulturgemeinschaft des DGB Stuttgart eV, Stuttgart, No. 2, April 1973
  • Wolfgang Rainer: On the day when the blackbird sang. Otto Ulmer in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart . In: “ Stuttgarter Zeitung ”, No. 278, December 1, 1973
  • Karl Diemer: Otto Ulmer's material pictures in the State Gallery. Nothing is everything . In: “ Stuttgarter Nachrichten ”, December 1, 1973
  • Friedrich Bayerthal: Collage 67 , exhibition catalog, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 1967

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ulmer, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German textile entrepreneur and painter
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1973
Place of death Stuttgart