Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber

Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber (* December 3, 1907 in Breslau as Riccarda Pfeiffer ; † August 25, 1985 in Reutlingen ) was a visual artist and wife of HAP Grieshaber .

Live and act

Riccarda Gertrud Franziska Pfeiffer was born in Breslau. Her father, the painter Richard Pfeiffer (1878–1962), worked here as a teacher. From 1910 he taught as a professor at the Königsberg Art Academy . Her mother Gertrud Pfeiffer – Kohrt (1875–1939) worked as a painter and book illustrator. The sculptor Hans Ludwig Pfeiffer (1903–1999) was her brother.

Like her brother Hans, she studied art, first at the Königsberg Art Academy, then at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin. Married to Hans Gohr in her first childless marriage since 1927 - her daughter Christiane Franziska was not born until 1943 - she worked as a freelance artist. Little is known about her early work. Due to the war, the artist from Königsberg first had to flee to the island of Usedom and in 1947 to Berlin . Her works were either lost in the chaos of war and refugees in 1944/45 or unknown to the public.

Riccarda worked under the male pseudonym Ralf Gregor to avoid discrimination as a woman.

meaning

Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber was brought in 1950 by her brother Hans Ludwig Pfeiffer as a teacher from Berlin to the Bernstein School , a center of artistic creation in the French occupation zone in the former Bernstein Monastery near Sulz am Neckar , which she had been running since 1951 after Paul Kälberer left in 1950 the management had largely withdrawn. She brought with her a conception of art based on Expressionism with a free understanding of shapes and colors and their interaction and thus gave the Bernstein School a new direction. The aim was to focus on the individual paths and artistic freedom of each individual student and to enable their development independently of external requirements based on their own inner drive.

Through her guidance I got to know the intrinsic value of color. I remember that when Riccarda Gohr came to Bernstein from Berlin, she brought pictures with her that were completely different from all those that had been created in Bernstein up to then. .... The pictures were clearly shaped by their teacher Johannes Walter-Kurau and his color theory. Walter Kurau's theory of colors aims at the expressive value of color; it says that the "color characters" are an equivalent of space and light. ( Emil Kiess )

In addition to the artistic direction, Riccarda directed her attention to the social context of art, had Bernstein students prepare presentations and invited contemporary artists and art scholars to give lectures. This is how she established contact with HAP Grieshaber , who first gave a lecture on painting in Bernstein on June 7, 1951. A short time later, HAP Grieshaber came to teach at the Bernstein School and took over the management. Riccarda married HAP Grieshaber in 1953. After the birth of her daughter Rica, she withdrew into the role of mother and wife. She gave up artistic painting entirely and became the author of several books. Later she worked mainly as a handicraft to earn money.

Artistic works

Oil on cardboard:

• Staircase, 1940s, Reutlingen donation house
• Odeon, 1940s, Reutlingen donation house
• Social Welfare Office, 1940s, Reutlingen donation house
• War, around 1945, Reutlingen donation house
• Amber, around 1950, Reutlingen donation house
• Still life with fruit bowl and jug, around 1950, Zweckverband OEW / Lkr. Rottweil
• Motorcyclist around 1952, Reutlingen Spendhaus
• Under the bridges, around 1952, Reutlingen donation house
• Sitting female nude, around 1955, Spendhaus Reutlingen
• Dairy sheep, privately owned

Literary works

• Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber: With ballpoint pen and wooden spoon. Notes of a foolish woman. Frankfurt am Main 1961.
• Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber: My English bulldogs. Frankfurt am Main 1963.
• Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber: Stories of Small Animals. Frankfurt am Main 1964.
• Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber: Nora and Arno. Stuttgart 1964.
• Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber: When I said goodbye. Memories of East Prussia. Stuttgart 1968.
• Riccarda Gregor-Grieshaber: Painted poetry on furniture. Baden-Baden / Stuttgart 1978.

literature

• Bernhard Rüth (Ed.): Riccarda. Pfeiffer-Gohr-Gregor-Grieshaber. The forgotten painter of amber . Rottweil 2016, ISBN 978-3-928869-35-5 (Texts: Dr. Ralf Gottschlich, Prof. Emil Kiess)

Web links

• Riccarda Gohr - the forgotten painter from Bernstein In: Neue Rottweiler Zeitung, accessed on November 11, 2016.