Richard Guhr

Richard Guhr, around 1912

Richard Guhr (born September 30, 1873 in Schwerin , † October 27, 1956 in Höckendorf near Dresden ; full name: Albert Eduard Richard Guhr ) was a German painter , sculptor and university professor .

Life

Guhr's father Johann Friedrich Oswald Guhr (born December 18, 1840 in Dresden ) was the court musician of the Grand Ducal Mecklenburg court orchestra (bassoon) in Schwerin, his mother was Juliane Helene Auguste Gallus (* 1847).

Richard Guhr was shaped by the residence cities of Schwerin, Berlin and Dresden. The parental home belonged to the educated middle class, who upgraded their origins and schooling through military service. Guhr served as a one-year volunteer from October 1, 1895 to July 7, 1896 with the Grand Ducal Mecklenburg Grenadier Regiment 89 .

In the years 1890 to 1891 Guhr completed a two-year course of study at the Dresden School of Applied Arts and from 1892 to 1893 at the teaching institution of the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts , among others with Max Friedrich Koch and Alfred Grenander . From 1893 he worked as a decorative painter and draftsman for MJ Bodenstein in Berlin and from 1896 participated in exhibitions, including the Berlin trade exhibition in 1896 . In 1901 an exhibition of Guhr's pictures followed in the "Gurlitt Art Salon".

In 1902 Guhr became the artistic assistant to the architect Bruno Möhring for the design of the German department at the St. Louis World Exhibition in 1904 . From 1904 to 1914 he finally had his own apartment and studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg . On January 1, 1905, Guhr was appointed professor of bronzes at the Dresden School of Applied Arts and on April 3, 1907, he was appointed professor of figure painting and figure drawing. Guhr joined the Dresden group Die Zunft in 1906 and took part in the Third German Applied Arts Exhibition in Dresden in 1906 with his own contributions. In 1934 he was appointed professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden , but retired in May 1938 at his own request.

The most prominent student of Richard Guhr during his work was Otto Dix from 1910 to 1914 , who took part in the lessons in figure painting and figure drawing led by Guhr. In Richard Guhr's decorative painting class, decorative design and modeling as well as figural drawing based on casts and models were taught. In 1909/1910 landscapes were created in the late impressionist style customary at the time (e.g. view of Radebeul, around 1910, view of Dresden-Neustadt, 1910). In the years 1911/1912 Dix also made his first plastic experiments under Richard Guhr.

Act

Sculpture on the Carl-Zuckmayer-Bridge in Rudolph-Wilde-Park in Berlin

Goldener Rathaus-Mann in Dresden

Richard Wagner memorial in Liebethaler Grund

Guhr became known as a sculptor of decorative architectural sculptures on facades and interiors with major orders for figural bronze casts between 1900 and 1920 for representation projects, including the New Town Hall in Dresden (" Goldener Rathausmann "), the Barmen Town Hall , the Stadtparkbrücke at the Rathaus Schöneberg subway station and for the Hotel Adlon in Berlin.

Although he turned increasingly to painting from around 1920, Richard Guhr remained largely unknown as a painter. He is considered a "thinker painter", committed to the New German painting of the Nazarenes as well as Moritz von Schwind and Arnold Böcklin . With his works he wanted to express that German painting and Germanness as a cultural and state unity can only regenerate themselves from old German painting and act as a means of popular education, whereby the artistic imagination should be assessed as an autonomous myth-creating principle.

The works of Richard Guhr are exemplary for the continued effect of painterly and literary romanticism, such as the “Triumph of Religion in the Arts” ( Städelsches Institut in Frankfurt) or his “German Parnassus” for Bochum's town hall . In his painterly oeuvre, especially in his late work, which was created between 1946 and 1949 (since 1980 in the Fritzlar Regional Museum ) including the "Wagner Honor" torso repainted between 1945 and 1956, he made Richard Wagner a cult figure through his portrayal of Wagner's ideas.

In his symbolic pictures with a preference for utopias and supposed values ​​of the past as well as the Greek-Germanic world of myths, Guhr sees himself in the field of painting as fulfilling Wagner's mandate of "Aryan regeneration". Therefore, in the early 1920s, ethnic groups in Dresden began to see Guhr as a prophet of national renewal. Those with a National Socialist orientation took Guhr's pictures, without his objections, ideologically and politically.

Honors

In today Pirna belonging district Graupa is Prof. Guhr-street named after him.

Works

• 1906–1907: Work on the interior of the Hotel Adlon in Berlin (cast bronze pillar capitals and bronze reliefs in the staircase) in collaboration with Wilhelm Kimbel
• 1907: Wall painting (fresco) "Arti Westfalicae" in the atrium of the Westphalian Provincial Museum in Münster (whitewashed after war damage)
• 1907–1912: Elaboration of the models of the tower figure “Hercules / Serapis” (“ Golden City Hall Man ”) and the allegory figures on finance, administration, justice, civil engineering, building construction, tobacco industry, trade, fruit growing, horticulture, shipping and the food industry on New Town Hall in Dresden
• 1909: Wall and ceiling paintings in the artist house of the Dresden Art Cooperative in Dresden, Albrechtstraße 6 (not preserved)
• 1909–1911: Coat of arms in the middle of the gable and relief above the door of the Secret and Main Archives Schwerin
• 1910: four groups of figures "Centaur and Nymph", eight decorative vases for the Stadtparkbrücke at the Rathaus Schöneberg underground station (today Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke )
• 1911: two cornice figures and two niche figures for the " Curiohaus " in Hamburg (allegories of art and science , preserved)
• 1911: Keystones above the windows of the Wertheim department store on Königstrasse in Berlin
• 1911/1912: Richard Wagner monument in Graupa, the 1933 Liebethaler base was set up
• 1912–1913: first pictures of the later Wagner honor
• 1912–1914: Bronzes "Dionysos / Proteus" on walrus on the steps of the pool in the Neukölln municipal swimming pool in Berlin-Neukölln
• 1914–1916: Allegories of Justice , Prosecution and Defense on the facade as well as atlas figures on the door to the jury court room of the justice building in Schwerin
• 1923: Figures on the staircase, corbels, coats of arms on the main front of the Barmer town hall in Wuppertal-Barmen
• 1930: Large painting "the German Parnassus " (also: "Muse des Parnassus" or "the German Hercules") depicting 51 artists and scientists in the council chamber of Bochum town hall surrounded by a putti orchestra (today in the Bochum Center for City History)
• 1933: Wagner head in Graupa
• 1940: Heimdall oil painting

Between 1921 and 1925, Guhr participated with various works in art exhibitions in Dresden and Berlin. His more famous works also include various stained glass for large exhibitions.

literature

• Guhr, Richard . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 333-334 .
• Ruth Stummann-Bowert: A Life for Richard Wagner. Richard Guhr. Painter and sculptor 1873 to 1956 (= publications by the Fritzlar Museum Foundation , No. 2.) Fritzlar 1988.
• Rolf Günther: The symbolism in Saxony 1870-1920. Sandstein, Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-937602-36-4 .

Web links

Commons : Richard Guhr  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Andreas Röpcke: Guhr, Albert Eduard Richard . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ mentioned in the “exhibition archive” of the Bochum Center for City History
2. ↑ The building is noble, helpful and good. Bochum town hall and its artistic and political program. In: Jürgen Mittag, Ingrid Wölk (ed.): Bochum and the Ruhr area. Big City Education in the 20th Century , Essen 2005, pp. 299–328
3. ↑ Wolfgang Hultsch (Ed.): Wars, Resistance, Frauenkirche . ISBN 978-3-7448-6762-7 , pp. 80 .