Reinhold Ewald (artist)

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Easel with literature on the life and work of Reinhold Ewald in the "castle ruins" in Wilhelmsbad .

Reinhold Ewald (* the 30th March 1890 in Hanau , † the 30th November 1974 ) was a German expressionist painter of modernity and teacher at the State Drawing Academy in Hanau , a training center for visual artists : painters, occupations in the applied arts , especially goldsmiths. In 2015/2016, all of his oeuvre was recognized in a retrospective in Frankfurt and Hanau.

Live and act

Reinhold Ewald was the son of the lending bank accountant Werner Ewald and his wife Wilhelmine, born couple. He had four siblings. His musically gifted father died in 1902. After successfully attending secondary school , in 1905 he sat in on a decorative painter from Hanau , Paul Hindemith's father . From 1906 to 1907 he attended the Royal Drawing Academy in his hometown. With a state scholarship, he continued his training at the teaching establishment of the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts until the beginning of 1911. His teachers there included Richard Böhland Bruno Paul , Emil Orlik , Emil Rudolf Weiß and Max Koch .

In the Berlin gallery Paul Cassirers and in the Nationalgalerie Berlin he saw not only the French impressionists but also the works of Paul Cézanne , Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh , which left a lasting impression on the young Ewald. Reinhold Ewald got to know the modern pictures of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at exhibitions of the Berlin and Munich Secession . At the age of 20, he was able to show two of his pictures in the 1910 annual exhibition of the Berlin Secession. He was also represented there in the following years.

In 1911 he returned to Hanau as a freelance painter. After a trip to Italy in 1913, where he was deeply impressed by the Giotto - frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and Piero della Francesca -Fresken in San Francesco in Arezzo , he had in 1914 his first major solo exhibition at Ludwig Schames in Frankfurt Main. He received positive reviews from the influential art historian Alfred Wolters , with whom he later met again and again. In the same year he became a member of the Free Secession Berlin. In 1915 he was drafted into the Western Front as a Landsturm recruit, and was temporarily employed as a war painter with the status of a war correspondent.

In August 1918 he married Johanna Meyer (1891–1939). She and their son Anatol (1920–1944) served him as models for pictures with the mother-and-child motif, some with a religious impression.

After the end of the First World War , he became a member of the Darmstadt Secession and the artist group Das Junge Rheinland in 1919 . From 1921 he worked as an assistant teacher at the Hanau drawing academy. In 1925 he became a teacher tenured. From 1923 he created the first monumental works, wall frescoes and glass windows. In the parish church of St. Peter and Paul in Dettingen am Main, for example, he painted a highly acclaimed expressionist cycle of paintings from the Way of the Cross and the Life of Mary, influenced by Mathias Grünewald . His extensive, mainly Expressionist- Cubist main work was created in the 1920s and is largely in the Hanau Historical Museum, in the estate, in private collections, or has been lost, although some sketches or notes have been preserved. He often portrayed women: Expressionist-Cubist in the big city, but also in the style of the Old Masters and Mannerism . In 1929 he was awarded the Honorary Prize of the City of Frankfurt. In the 1920s he was u. a. the teacher of Hein Heckroth , Wilhelm Wagenfeld , August Peukert and Herbert Zeitner .

In 1928 he married Clara Weinhold (1903–1999), who herself emerged as an artist after attending the Kassel Art Academy . In 1932 they divorced, and in 1933 he married Berta (Bertel) Becker (1911–1984). Their daughter Iris was born in 1940. All three wives were at times students at the Hanau Drawing Academy.

Shortly after the National Socialists came to power in August 1933 - despite his membership in the NSDAP since May 1, 1933 - he was dismissed from teaching and took early retirement. The drawing academy became a school for goldsmiths, and the number of teachers and students fell sharply. In 1937, early pictures were confiscated as " degenerate art ", although he had also painted or drawn some propaganda pictures in the sense of "German art" . With his still lifes, landscapes and portraits he was no longer in the public interest. A nude picture that he wanted to present at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1940 was rejected by the selection committee in advance. During the Second World War he worked for the United Lausitzer Glaswerke (VLG) in Weißwasser / Oberlausitz , whose artistic direction was his former student Wagenfeld. Recruited to the Volkssturm in the last days of the war in 1945 , he deserted and hid in the tower ruins in Wilhelmsbader Park. Part of his work was destroyed by bombs. After the end of the war he was classified in category IV as a “ fellow traveler ” in the denazification process and in 1946 sentenced to pay a fine of 1500 Reichsmarks to the reparation fund. In 2015 , the art historian Gregor Wedekind, who worked at the University of Mainz , undertook the academic preparation of his ambivalent role in the time of National Socialism .

From 1949 to 1963 he worked again as a teacher at the Hanau Drawing Academy. From 1960 to 1971 he made annual trips to Italy. During these years he exhibited alone and together with other artists, without being able to build on his successes during the Weimar Republic.

He left behind an extensive body of work, such as the catalog for the 300 works comprehensive double exhibition Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. 2015/2016 in the Museum Giersch of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and in the Historical Museum Hanau with essays on biography and oeuvre edited by Manfred Großinsky and Susanne Wartberg. Paintings, graphics, sculpture, jewelry, ceramics, glass and enamel works from all creative periods as well as sketches and documents from the estate were presented. The basis of the retrospective were the works of art in the collection of the museum in Philippsruhe Palace and the Hanau Art Academy. There were also important works from private property and from his legacy. Stylistically, he moved from late impressionism and the old art of Arcadia between expressionism, new objectivity and expressive realism .

Works (selection)

Gouaches , oil paintings, wall paintings, drawings, frescoes , sculptures , handicrafts such as glass painting and jewelry.

  • 1922: The Nuremberg bay window
  • 1923: Large-format fresco cycle “Dettinger Passion” in the parish church of St. Peter and Paul in Dettingen
  • 1923–1924: Choir windows and angel columns in the Catholic Church of St. Michael in Saarbrücken
  • 1921: Book illustration for Oskar Kokoschka's Murderer, Hope of Women (play in one act; music by Paul Hindemith (op.12); piano reduction for two hands by Hermann Uhticke, drawing on the book cover)
  • 1921: Book illustration for August Schramm's Sancta Susanna (op.21; music by Paul Hindemith; piano excerpt with text by Hermann Uhticke; drawing on the book cover)
  • 1923: Book illustration for Hendrik Goverts' Der Weg. Early poems ( lithograph on the book cover)
  • 1959: Walkers (oil on hardboard)

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1967: Reinhold Ewald . Marlies Hess Foundation, Frankfurt am Main
  • 1990/1991: Reinhold Ewald. 1890-1974 . Exhibition for the 100th birthday in the Historisches Museum Hanau
  • 2015/2016: Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. Reinhold Ewald 1890–1974 . Museum Giersch of the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main and in the Hanau Historical Museum
  • 2017: Reinhold Ewald. “58 paintings and 10 drawings from the artist's estate.” Uwe Opper Gallery, Kronberg im Taunus

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Another common spelling: Richard Boehland.
  2. ^ Susanne Wartenberg: Ewald - data on life and work. In: Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. Reinhold Ewald 1890–1974. (Exhibition catalog), Petersberg 2015, p. 469.
  3. ^ Claudia Caesar: Reinhold Ewald in the burning mirror of the 1920s, according to the catalog for the exhibition in Frankfurt and Hanau 2015, Reinhold Ewald. "58 paintings and 10 drawings from the artist's estate." Uwe Opper Gallery, Kronenberg im Taunus 2017.
  4. ^ Susanne Wartenberg: Ewald - data on life and work. In: Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. Reinhold Ewald 1890–1974. (Exhibition catalog), Petersberg 2015, p. 469.
  5. ↑ Press kit for the double exhibition Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. Reinhold Ewald 1890–1974, 2015/2016 as a PDF file
  6. ↑ Alois Kölbl: Cosmic space formation. Reinhold Ewald as a painter of the Dettinger Passion. In: Michael Pfeifer (Ed.): Sehnsucht des Raum. St. Peter and Paul in Dettingen. Regensburg 1998, p. 119 ff.
  7. ^ Michael Pfeifer: Parish Church of St. Peter and Paul Dettingen am Main. ( Memento of November 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 29, 2017.
  8. ↑ Michael Pfeifer: The space expanded. Reinhold Ewald's “Dettinger Passion” in the light of Grünewald . Association of Catholic Youth (BDKJ) in the Diocese of Würzburg online, January 28, 2003, accessed on November 29, 2017.
  9. ↑ Reinhold Gries: Memory of Reinhold Ewald. Virtuoso chronicler of modern life . In: op online , September 11, 2015, accessed on November 29, 2017.
  10. ↑ Press kit for the double exhibition Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. Reinhold Ewald 1890–1974, 2015/2016 as a PDF file
  11. ^ State Drawing Academy Hanau. Design in precious metals, since 1772: 230 years of the drawing academy between art and craft , accessed on December 1, 2017.
  12. ^ Julia Voss : Art according to Nazi taste. When Hermann Göring was still praising Modigliani . In: FAZ. November 21, 2015, print and online edition, accessed on November 28, 2017.
  13. ^ Hans-Bernd Heier: Reinhold Ewald: one artist - two exhibition locations . In: Feuilleton Frankfurt online. The magazine for art, culture & lifestyle, September 17, 2015, accessed on December 1, 2017.
  14. ^ Judith von Sternburg: Reinhold Ewald Frankfurt Hanau. The flexible, closed person . In: Frankfurter Rundschau. online, September 11, 2015, accessed November 29, 2017.
  15. ^ Gregor Wedekind: Being an artist under National Socialism. The Reinhold Ewald case. In: Expressive. Experimental. Headstrong. Reinhold Ewald 1890–1974. Exhibition catalog. Petersberg 2015, pp. 113-133.
  16. ^ Reinhold Ewald double exhibition Hanau – Frankfurt, Giersch.de as a PDF file
  17. ^ Hans-Bernd Heier: Reinhold Ewald: one artist - two exhibition locations . In: Feuilleton Frankfurt online. The magazine for art, culture & lifestyle, September 17, 2015, accessed on December 1, 2017.
  18. ↑ The parish church from the perspective of the painter by Reinhold Ewald from 1967. In: Michael Pfeifer (Ed.): Sehnsucht des Raumes. St. Peter and Paul in Dettingen. Regensburg 1998, p. 117 f. ( online )
  19. ↑ Works from the 1920s
  20. ↑ Reading sample from the publisher as a PDF file
  21. ^ Judith von Sternburg: Reinhold Ewald Frankfurt Hanau. The flexible, closed person . In: Frankfurter Rundschau. online, September 11, 2015, accessed November 29, 2017.
  22. ↑ Biography: Wolfgang Arnim Nagel , Hanau Nail Foundation
  23. ^ Organization and catalog editing: Jutta Sell.
personal data
SURNAME Ewald, Reinhold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1974
Place of death Hanau