Peter Josef Breuer

Jupp Breuer, self-portrait in: Der Weg 1926

Peter Josef "Jupp" Breuer (born January 3, 1908 in Mönchengladbach , † June 21, 1991 in Sankt Augustin ) was a German graphic artist. Breuer mainly worked in drawing as well as woodcuts and linocuts in the style of New Objectivity , more precisely of Verism .

Life

After attending the textile engineering school in Mönchengladbach, he received his first artistic training from 1926 to 1930 in Dresden and Berlin. He attended the private art school “Der Weg”, which was based in both cities and led by Edmund Kesting , then Lothar Schreyer and Hans Haffenrichter , and had his own small studio at the Jaques-Dalcroze School in Dresden-Hellerau . In the first “Der Weg” publication from 1926, one of his woodcut works was shown, a self-portrait. In 1930 he moved to the Bauhaus in Dessau , where he studied drawing, painting, photography and commercial graphics with Josef Albers and Joost Schmidt . In 1932 this course ended involuntarily because, like some other fellow students, he was expelled for taking sides with two expelled Communist student representatives.

PJBreuer, Panther, woodcut, 1945

He then moved to Berlin, from 1934 to Cologne and worked as a commercial artist (including for Bayer Leverkusen). In 1941 he was called up for military service on the Western Front, and in 1944 he was taken prisoner of war by the British, which he spent until 1946 in the Ascot camp, where he resumed his artistic activity, encouraged by fellow prisoners who were equally interested. His subjects were animals, especially panthers, and war cripples. He illustrated the volume of poetry “Our Song”, made sets for theater performances, among others with the sculptor and painter Ludwig Gabriel Schrieber , and founded and directed the “AG Art” in the camp.

PJ Breuer, poster, 1948

Returning to Cologne in 1946, he re-founded a studio for graphics, photography and design and now also worked for the Thonet (furniture) and Storck (fabrics) companies. In 1948 and 1950 he created the posters for the exhibitions of the "Rhenish Secession" and the "New Rhenish Secession" in Düsseldorf .

Breuer was married twice. The marriages result in two sons and two daughters.

Sources and literature

• The script: The way . Berlin / Dresden 1926, p. 7
• Ernst Blumenthal: The Fate of the Bauhaus . In: Weltbühne 28 (1932), pp. 86-88
• Our song (with illustrations by PJ Breuer), Ascot (GB) 1945
• Hans Maria Wingler : The Bauhaus . Cologne 1968, pp. 552, 560
• Peter Hahn (Ed.): Bauhaus Berlin. A documentation compiled by the Bauhaus Archive Berlin . Weingarten 1985, pp. 37, 55, 287
• Peter Josef Breuer . In: General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL) Vol. XIV, Leipzig / Munich 1996, p. 173