Rainer Zimmermann (art historian)

Rainer Zimmermann (born August 6, 1920 in Schluckenau ; † November 22, 2009 in Wetter - Oberrosphe ) was a German journalist , art historian , publicist , art collector and author of books on modern art.

Live and act

Career

Rainer Zimmermann was born in 1920 as the son of the publisher Benno Zimmermann and his wife Johanna (née Gabler). After graduating from secondary school in Rumburg , he took part in the Second World War as an officer in the Air Force . After 1945 he studied art history , German literature and philosophy at the University of Marburg , among others with Richard Hamann . After completing his studies, he first worked as a feature editor from 1950 to 1968 , then editor-in-chief of the Oberhessische Presse in Marburg . From 1969 until his retirement in 1979 he worked as a board member in the insurance industry, a profession that proved to be a solid foundation for his work as a book author, collector and organizer.

Zimmermann was a co-founder of the Marburg Artists' Circle, from which the Marburger Kunstverein emerged and which he headed until 1958. He was also a co-founder of the “Friends of the Marburg University Museum” and for many years chairman of the Otto Pankok Society .

Art collector

Zimmermann began collecting pictures, drawings and graphics during his time as a journalist. He focused on works by artists who shared a similar biography. They came from German-speaking countries, were born around the turn of the century in 1900 and their studies fell into the confusion of the post-war era and the hardship after the First World War . Due to their painterly, expressionist way of working, they did not fit into the National Socialist conception of art from 1933 onwards. After 1945, they were unable to break through the dominance of abstract artists in the West and socialist realism in East Germany, as determined by Zimmermann, and were thus sidelined. Zimmermann saw the painter Franz Frank , who also lived in Marburg and with whom he had a lifelong friendship that lasted until his death in 1986, as an exemplary representative of this generation .

"Lost Generation" and "Expressive Realism"

After his retirement in 1979, he intensified his collecting activities. In 1980 he published the book The Art of the Lost Generation along with his own art collection, which had grown considerably by then . German expressive realism painting from 1925 to 1975 and mainly described his own portfolio in short biographies of around 200 painters and graphic artists. For this book, as well as a designation for his own collection, he reached with Lost Generation sociological concept of Lost Generation (Lost Generation), which among other things by Gertrude Stein and Hannah Arendt introduced into the literature and the American (and French) writer of 1920s and in which Zimmermann saw parallels.

About the subtitle of his book and the locating designation of his own stylistically heterogeneous art collection, Zimmermann wrote: “The term 'Expressive Realism' was chosen because it remains general enough not to pretend to be stylistically unified, where it is only about the commonality of an artistic basic attitude. Both the term 'realism' and the definition 'expressive' are characteristics of recurring attitudes. In their connection they delimit the design possibilities they describe clearly enough from other directions, but still encompass a broad spectrum of individual forms ... ”( Expressive Realism. Painting of the Lost Generation , p. 155).

Fourteen years later, due to the collection that had grown in the meantime, an expanded version of the book with biographies of 420 artists appeared, but he switched the title with the subtitle Expressive Realism. Painting of the Lost Generation (1994). In his “Monday Gallery” he showed new acquisitions from his collection and published his own bibliophile texts.

In 1991, Zimmermann founded the “Friends of Fine Art”, which from 1993 set up the “Expressive Realism” museum in the New Palace in Kisslegg and which, in addition to a permanent presentation of Zimmermann's own collection, showed 23 special exhibitions. The house was closed in 2004 due to lack of money, the collection was returned to Zimmermann.

Foundations

In 1994 he and his wife Emmy donated five paintings and five works on paper to a Marburg “Expressive Realism Foundation - Collection Emmy and Rainer Zimmermann”. In 2008, Zimmermann received a donation from a further 640 works to the University Museum Marburg, including 28 oil paintings and 609 Watercolors, drawings, etchings, lithographs and woodcuts. Among them are expressive works by Joseph Mader (1905–1982), Franz Frank (1897–1986), Fritz Heinsheimer (1897–1958), Joseph Kneer (1900–1990), Bruno Müller-Linow (1909–1997) , Alfred Wais (1905–1988) and Paul Kleinschmidt (1883–1949).

Fonts

• The wasp nest. Narrative. With 12 drawings by Hans Fronius . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1976, ISBN 978-3-7857-0183-6 .
• The art of the lost generation. German expressive realism painting from 1925 to 1975. Econ, Düsseldorf and Vienna 1980 ISBN 3-430-19961-1 (also dissertation at the University of Marburg 1986); Revised new edition under the title: Expressive Realism. Painting of the Lost Generation. Hirmer, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7774-6420-1 .
• The trick of death. What man invented art for. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-422-06227-6 .
• The wrong ways of modern art. Noũs, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-924249-34-2 .
• Philosophical infidelities - thoughts about God and the world. Langen Müller, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8004-1476-5 .

literature

• Who is Who - The German Who's Who 2000/2001. 39th edition, Schmidt-Römhild, Verlagsgruppe Beleke, Lübeck 2000, ISBN 978-3-7950-2029-3 , p. 1578.
• Ingrid von der Dollen (Ed.): In the resistance against time. On visual art in the 20th century. Letters to RZ 1961–1996, Rainer Zimmermann on his 80th birthday. Publication of the “Förderkreis Expressiver Realismus”. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-422-06334-X .

Web links

• Literature by and about Rainer Zimmermann in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Press office of the Philipps University: New Images of Expressive Realism from the Zimmermann Collection. Press release. October 16, 2008, accessed June 13, 2012 . 
2. ^ Including letters from Otto Pankok