Robert Koepke

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Robert Koepke (born May 7, 1893 in Bremen , † January 3, 1968 in Frankenburg ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

Robert Koepke was born in Bremen as the son of the music teacher Max Koepke and his wife Betty Schwarmann. Parallel to elementary school, he attended the boys' drawing school in Bremen on afternoons when there was no school. However, the father had other career plans for his son and sent him to a commercial apprenticeship. After completing his apprenticeship, Koepke took a part-time job at a Hamburg company to attend an arts and crafts school in the second half of the day . At the beginning of the First World War he was called up for military service and after his recruit training came to the Western Front in France . He kept a war diary in which he noted his experiences and illustrated them in a sketchbook with drawings, photos, maps and newspaper clippings. The seventeen pencil, charcoal and oil pastel drawings lay between Art Nouveau and early Expressionism and already bore the stylistic features typical of Koepke. In November 1918, after the end of the war, he returned to Bremen and continued his intermittent studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Bremen. His teachers were Friedrich Erich Kleinhempel , Willy Menz and Paul Perks. With graphic drafts, among other things for posters, as well as with handicraft commissioned work for furniture, lamps, wallpaper and fabrics, he laid the basis for life as a freelance artist.

In 1922 he married the interior designer Margarethe Hentrich, whom he knew from the arts and crafts school. The Koepke couple moved into an apartment in Bremen and the young woman furnished them with original Low German farmhouse furniture and dishes.

Koepke had connections to Worpswede artists from an early stage . At the end of the 1920s, he and them participated in the Bremer Kunstschau exhibitions in Böttcherstraße in Bremen, a museum center that Ludwig Roselius had built. In 1927 Koepke and his wife came to Schwalenberg for the first time, probably by accident . After that, he spent a few weeks in spring and autumn in the painter's town every year, met with landscape painters in the artists' cave and exhibited with them. The first open-air painters came to Schwalenberg before the turn of the century to paint in the great outdoors.

At the beginning of the Second World War , the Koepkes moved to Grasberg near Worpswede. In an air raid in 1942, the apartment in Bremen was destroyed and many of Koepke's works were destroyed. In 1951 the family moved into their own house in Frankenburg near Bremen. Koepke joined the Bremen Artists' Association and has now taken part in numerous exhibitions. The artist died at the age of 74 in his home in Frankenburg. His wife Margarethe survived him by 23 years.

plant

Koepke's painting style was decisively influenced by the development of art in northern Germany. Acquaintance with the first generation of Worpswede artists played a dominant role on the one hand, and on the other hand the long-standing ties to the painter city of Schwalenberg and the painters who worked there. The expressionist tendencies of the early 1920s stemmed from the collaboration with Karl Lorenz and led to a stronger use of color and abstract design of shapes and surfaces. However, they did not change Koepke's basic attitude towards a natural and impressionistic style of painting.

Around 1920 Koepke met the poet and painter Karl Lorenz (1888–1961), who was the editor of the magazine Die Rote Erde and other editions. In Das neue Hamburg, a yearbook for young art , he had expressionist woodcuts by Robert Koepke reproduced. After 1925 a clear departure from Expressionism can be observed and Impressionist landscapes played an essential role in his work. After the inflation, economic considerations probably also led to this decision. Added to this was his versatility in the various fields of handicrafts , as well as his activity as a commercial artist . Once he received an order to help set up an ocean liner, which he successfully carried out.

Robert Koepke was often out on his bike and painted in the great outdoors. The artist meticulously noted his works in so-called work books, for example the numbering, the nature of the material and painting surface, the colors used and the special features of the motif. By 1965, records of over 3,099 works were collected in this way. One of the carefully kept work books also shows that at the end of the 1920s he did without canvas for his oil paintings and now preferred strong cardboard. This was carefully prepared by him by applying multiple layers of a glaze-like painting ground to the front . He also covered the back of the oil paintings with a glaze that was supposed to guarantee their durability.

In the 1930s Koepke had connections with the painters Karl Krummacher, Walter Bertelsmann and his son Jürgen , all painters of the second generation of painters from Worpswede. Around 1927 Koepke made a longer bike tour to Lippe and got to know Schwalenberg. The area fascinated him and in the following years he created numerous oil paintings of motifs from the city and its surroundings, such as the Emmerwiesen , the valleys around Schieder , Falkenhagen , Niese , Lothe and many others. His favorite seasons were spring and autumn. He then exhibited his pictures from a small northern German town in Berlin, Hanover and other large cities.

In the 1960s Koepke turned to flower painting. The works continue the tradition of classic flower painting, of which there were some important representatives among the Worpswede painters. Koepke mostly painted the flower pictures in small formats and only in oil.

After the death of his wife, most of Robert Koepke's works are privately owned and owned by the family. Several drawings, graphics and paintings are kept in the East Frisian State Museum.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 8-15. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
  2. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 20-25. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
  3. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 31-56. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
  4. ↑ a b Robert Koepke - Landscape Library , accessed on April 2, 2010
  5. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 20-25. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
  6. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 16-19. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
  7. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 22-25. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
  8. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Koepke - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 40-41. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1978
personal data
SURNAME Koepke, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1968
Place of death Frankenburg , Osterholz district