Richard Eberle

Richard Eberle 1993

Richard Eberle (born August 16, 1918 in Sulzbach-Altenwald , † 2001 in Saarbrücken ) was a German visual artist and art teacher .

Biographical

Richard Eberle, born in 1918 in the mining village of Sulzbach- Altenwald in Saarland and raised there, was the youngest of eight children in a working-class family. After graduating from school, he attended the drawing class of Oscar Trepte, a representative of the New Objectivity, at the Saarbrücken State School of Applied Arts, founded by the League of Nations , from 1934 to 1935 . After the Saarland was taken over by Nazi Germany , the school was closed in 1936. Eberle received a scholarship to study at the Art Academy in Munich, together with the Saarlanders Fritz Berberich , Helmut Collmann and Fritz Zolnhofer , through the advocacy of the art-loving former cultural advisor Bruno Orth, who was tolerated by the Reich Commissioner .

In Munich he attended the painting class of Karl Caspar , who combined late impressionism and expressionism in his painting. During this time Eberle made his first trips to Vienna and Switzerland and made the acquaintance of contemporary French art while visiting the world exhibition in Paris in 1937. After Karl Caspar's dismissal as a "degenerate" man, Richard Eberle left the Munich Art Academy with many of his fellow students. He succeeds in receiving a scholarship: he enrolls at the academies of Rome and Palermo and explores Italy for almost a year.

In 1939 he was called up for military service. French and Italian language skills enabled him to be transferred to the Mediterranean Mixed Control Commission in 1940. Shortly before the occupation of Vichy France by the German troops, he applied for a leave of absence to graduate. Categorized as no longer suitable for front use due to illness, his application is granted. On the recommendation of Carl Kaspar, Eberle continued his studies in the painting class of the important Austrian late expressionist Anton Kolig at the Stuttgart Art Academy and completed it as a master class student .

In 1944 he was called up again for military service. In 1945 he was first taken prisoner in the United States and then in French captivity in Brittany and in Pas de Calais , from which he was released in 1946.

In addition to the long-standing friendships with numerous Saarland painters, the one with Helmut Collmann and Mia Münster , with whom he spent several months painting stays in Corsica and Spain, should also be mentioned. The painter Richard Becker, whom he often visited in Sanary in the south of France and later in Zurich, was his mentor and friend who was valued until his death .

The source of inspiration for Richard Eberle was his numerous trips, especially to the south he loved - to France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco, but also to Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, England, Norway (within a three-month Scholarship from the Edward Munch Foundation, 1979) and South America. Since his retirement in 1979 he lived alternately in Drap near Nice and Saarbrücken.

From 1946 to 1958 Richard Eberle worked as a freelancer in the now semi-autonomous Saarland . As a painter and socially committed person, it was important to him to also improve the social situation of artists. In 1946 he took part in the re-establishment of the Saarland Artists Association , of which he was a managing director from 1947 to 1966. After the referendum in 1955 and the resulting affiliation to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957, he also joined the professional association of visual artists Rhineland-Palatinate / Saar in 1963 and was vice-president there from 1965 to 1970. In 1970 he was significantly involved in the re-establishment of the independent BBK Saar and was on its board until 1979. In 1972 the Saarland professional association joined the printing and paper trade union . Eberle's membership in the advisory board of the Saarland Museum and the Modern Gallery Saarbrücken (1976–1979) and, last but not least, his many years as a lay judge at the Saarbrücken district court (1965–1978) testify to his social commitment .

His educational commitment should also be mentioned. Initially created out of economic constraints, over the years he valued the chance to "pass on something of one's own love and obsession" to young people, as he put it. Knowledge of art and art history was an important part of education for him, which he wanted to convey. Dealing with children and young people, their imagination and spontaneity, was also a stimulus for his own work.

In 1954, through the agency of the painter Marga Lauer, Eberle worked for several months in the Saarland school service at the girls' high school in St. Wendel. From 1958 to 1979 he worked as an art teacher at the Ludwigsgymnasium and the Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium in Saarbrücken. From 1970 to 1981 he offered drawing and etching courses as well as art historical excursions as part of the adult education center. Mention should also be made of lectures and etching courses lasting several months in cooperation with the national education institute FUNDEC in Venezuela in 1981 and 1982.

Richard Eberle was married to Trude Jene from 1944 until her death in 1955. The daughter Nora (born 1947) came from the marriage. From 1956 until her death in 2000, he was married to Brigitte Sartorius. The daughter Ricarda (born 1960) came from this marriage.

plant

Especially in his time as a freelance artist until 1958, Eberle designed glass paintings, windows, sgraffiti, reliefs and mosaics, among other things for churches, schools, sanctuary halls, sports facilities and private buildings, especially in Saarland, but also in Rhineland-Palatinate and Switzerland .

Richard Eberle's oeuvre is extensive and varied. The focus was on oil painting, but he also always dealt with drawing, watercolor, gouache and, a little later, with graphic techniques, especially etching.

His pictorial themes are also of great diversity: Southern and maritime landscapes, views of the Saarland, interiors, genre and everyday scenes, nudes, portraits and self-portraits, still lifes . There are references to mythological, social and societal issues. Eberle is a representational painter with a certain proximity to magical realism and a narrative element in his pictorial content. For him, painting was, according to his own statements, a targeted intellectual process of design, composition and order using colors and shapes from an "inner visual store", the joy of the richness of the palette, of the dialogue and life of the colors, of conveying image content .

Exhibitions

Numerous solo and group exhibitions, including in Saarbrücken, St. Ingbert, Saarlouis, St. Wendel, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, Bonn, Kaiserslautern, Paris, Nice, Lyon, London, Puerto Ordaz.

literature

Nora Adamo, Peter Riede (Ed.): Richard Eberle. A painter and his work. Saarbrücken 1993, OCLC 313169271 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Eberle, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German visual artist and art educator
DATE OF BIRTH	August 16, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH	Sulzbach-Altenwald
DATE OF DEATH	2001
Place of death	Saarbrücken