Paul Wieghardt

Paul Wieghardt (born August 26, 1897 in Lüdenscheid , † December 9, 1969 in Wilmette near Chicago ) was a German painter .

Life

Paul Wieghardt's father, a master painter, encouraged him early on to take up painting. After the years of apprenticeship in his father's company, which gave him a technical basis for later painting, he became a soldier at the age of 18. In 1917 he was buried in the barrage near Amiens and lost speech due to shock, which he only regained after long therapy. During the recovery period he dealt in detail with literature, architecture and art and attended courses at the newly established Fichte adult education center , through which he also made contact with the youth movement. In doing so, he laid the foundation for his spiritual further education, which he had previously been denied by the war.

In 1920 he decided to train as an artist and began studying at the Cologne School of Applied Arts ( Elsässer and Seuffert). In 1923 he went to the newly founded Bauhaus in Weimar, where he studied with Klee , Kandinsky , Moholy-Nagy , Feininger and Schlemmer . Paul Klee in particular became a role model for the student Wieghardt for his later work as a teacher. In Cologne he met the sculpture student Nelli Bar , who studied with Albiker and later with Maillol . She became his critical partner.

In the autumn of 1925 he was accepted by the Dresden Art Academy . He became a master student of the late impressionist Robert Sterl . Wieghardt finished his studies in 1931 with awards. He turned down a teaching position at the Düsseldorf Academy. He went to Paris with Nelli Bar, where they got married. The next eight years in Paris, Portugal and Norway were decisive for Wieghardt's further development. Its palette has been brightened and enriched by the new environment. In 1932 he exhibited in three famous Parisian salons : Salon du Mai (today Salon des Tuileries ), Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne . Critics become aware of his work. In 1937 Paul Wieghardt received an invitation to participate in the exhibition in the French pavilion of the world exhibition.

When the war broke out, the Wieghardts were in Oslo. Since Nelli Bar is Jewish, they fled when German troops marched into Sweden. They emigrated to the USA via the Soviet Union, Japan and Panama. Paul Wieghardt quickly gained a foothold there thanks to the start-up aid given to the refugees from Europe. He painted again in a barn in Massachusetts that had been converted into a studio, and exhibitions in museums and galleries soon arose in quick succession. After heading the painting department of a summer school, he received his first teaching post in Philadelphia.

Services

In 1946 he was appointed professor for figurative painting at the Academy of the "Art Institute of Chicago". Additional teaching positions at the Illinois Institute of Technology under the direction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and at the Evanston Art Center near Chicago followed. Numerous exhibitions in the USA and international places took place. Museums and collectors bought his paintings. His students included u. a. Claes Oldenburg , Robert Indiana , Leon Golub - names that have international significance today.

After the artist's death, who died in Wilmette near Chicago in 1969, the Art Institute of Chicago held a comprehensive retrospective exhibition. Some of these pictures could also be seen in his hometown. In 1981 Nelli Bar-Wieghardt donated a large part of the estate of his hometown, which is now located in the Museum of the City of Lüdenscheid as the Wieghardt Foundation.

His great-nephew Johann Peter Wieghardt , who also became a visual artist, painter and sculptor, was born in Lüdenscheid (1966).

literature

• Eckhard Trox: Paul Wieghardt (1897–1969) and Nelli Bär-Wieghardt (1901–2001) . In: Klaus Kösters (ed.): Adaptation - Survival - Resistance: Artists in National Socialism. Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-12924-1 , pp. 241–249.
• Susanne Conzen / Eckhard Trox (eds.): Paul Wieghardt (1897-969) - Coming and going. An artist biography between Cologne, Weimar, Dresden, Paris and Chicago , Petersberg: Imhof 2019, ISBN 978-3-7319-0885-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Wieghardt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website about Paul Wieghardt