Paul Wellershaus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Wellershaus (born May 20, 1887 in Radevormwald ; † February 23, 1976 there ) was a German painter .

Wellershaus was born in 1887 as the son of a farmer and watchmaker in the small Bergisch town of Radevormwald, district of Feckinghausen . After attending school in Radevormwald- Filde from 1891 to 1901 and the Schwelmer secondary school from 1901 to 1902, he completed a craft training as a painter and house painter in Barmen (now part of Wuppertal ). After a short time as a journeyman, he switched to a wallpaper company as a pattern designer .

From 1907 to 1911 he was a student of professors Ludwig Fahrenkrog and Gustav Wiethüchter at the Barmen School of Applied Arts , where he completed an artistic training course, which he continued at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Professors Willy Spatz and Eugen Dücker until 1913.

After a stay abroad in Paris in 1913/14, during which he discovered the works of impressionists such as Paul Cézanne for himself, he was drafted and served as a war painter in Macedonia during the First World War . In 1916, 13 of his paintings and 10 graphics from this period - mostly landscapes - were exhibited for the first time in Barmen. Due to malaria he did not return from Macedonia until 1919 and in 1921 he married the Barmer painter Charlotte Marie Söhn († 1931), and in 1922 a son was born. From 1919 his works were presented to the public in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Wellershaus joined the artist group "Wupperkreis" around 1928, u. a. with Kurt Nantke , Richard Paling , Ewald Platte and Ferdinand Röntgen . He was a co-founder of the Rhenish Secession . He maintained contacts with representatives of avant-garde art movements, but remained rather down-to-earth himself. Nevertheless, he found attention from progressive artist colleagues in Berlin .

Although he preferred to depict life in and around Radevormwald, five of his pictures were removed from museums by the National Socialist rulers as " degenerate art " due to their realistic, non-idealized portrayal of rural life . In 1940 he married his second wife Wera Schulte, and a daughter and a son are born. During the Second World War , his son fell from his first marriage.

Wellershaus remained true to his place of birth and spent most of his life in the Radevormwald village of Vorm Baum , where he bought a house in 1924 and died in 1976. Wellershaus' work mainly includes landscapes and cityscapes of his Bergisch homeland. So he formed z. B. in the style of impressionism from Wupperbrücken and Femelinde zu Remlingrade . In the late phase of his work his works became increasingly abstract, animal representations complemented his subjects.

Awards and honors
  • Naming of a Radevormwalder Strasse in Paul-Wellershaus-Weg .

literature

  • G. Sieper, G. Wroblowski: Paul Wellershaus 1887–1976. The graphic work. Catalog for the exhibition Schwelm 1985 . Schwelm Art Association, 1985.
  • U. Becks-Malorny: The art association in Barmen 1866-1946. Civil patronage between the German Empire and National Socialism . Born-Verlag Wuppertal 1992, p. 70 ff. And p. 274 ff.
  • Dirk Soechting : Paul Wellershaus (1887–1976) . In: Romerike Berge ; Volume 55, p. 51 ff.
  • Paul Hombrecher: The expressionist of the mountain. Landes: Paul Wellershaus . In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar; Volume 47
  • E. Günther: Biography Paul Wellershaus . In: Romerike Berge; Volume 41, p. 16 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Museum Kunstpalast : Artists from the Düsseldorf School of Painting (selection, as of November 2016, PDF )
personal data
SURNAME Wellershaus, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Radevormwald
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1976
Place of death Radevormwald