Robert Michel (artist)

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Robert Michel (born February 27, 1897 in Vockenhausen ; † June 11, 1983 in Titisee-Neustadt ) was a German typographer , graphic designer , commercial artist , architect and test pilot at the beginning of his career .

life and work

Robert Michel came from a family of manufacturers that had been based in Vockenhausen since 1800, who specialized in the manufacture of (black) colors through the tannery and gradually acquired all of the town's mills. After elementary school he attended the Garnier Institute in Friedrichsdorf im Taunus from 1908 to 1914 and intended to become a mechanical engineer. His enthusiasm for aviation, which was still young, brought him into contact with the aviation pioneer August Euler in Darmstadt in 1912 . In 1914 he worked for the aircraft company Gothaer Waggonfabrik and at the aircraft yard in Hanover. At the beginning of the war he volunteered for the aviators and in 1915 took his pilot's exam at the Herzog Carl Eduard military aviation school in Gotha. He then served as a test pilot in the Gothaer Waggonfabrik until he fell in 1917 with a “ Gothaer Taube ” that caught fire and suffered serious injuries.

After his recovery, he turned to the performing arts. In the "Hochschule für Bildende Künste" in Weimar he met his future wife Ella Bergmann in the drawing class of Walther Klemm . They unsuccessfully turned against what they believed to be the dusty teaching methods, left school and worked freelance in their own studios from winter 1918/19. In April 1919 Walter Gropius exhibited her collages for the opening of the Weimar Bauhaus. Ella Bergmann and Robert Michel married in October 1919. In 1920 their son Hans , who became an important graphic artist and graphic designer , and in 1927 daughter Ella were born. Both artists worked for a short time at the Bauhaus in 1920 , but left Weimar again soon afterwards, as the teaching there was too academic for them and too much determined by dogmatic struggles for direction.

Robert Michel retired to the Taunus in his birthplace Vockenhausen (today part of the city of Eppstein ) near Frankfurt / Main, where he inherited a paint mill ( "die Schmelz" ), which he used as a studio for himself and his wife Ella Bergmann-Michel rebuilt. He later called the property "Heimatmuseum of Modern Art" .

In 1920 he first took part in exhibitions in Hanover, Leipzig and Cologne. In 1921 he met Kurt Schwitters , who remained on friendly terms with the artist couple throughout their lives. In 1924/1925 Robert Michel was redesigning retail stores in Frankfurt. For the New Frankfurt of Ernst May he was then active in the design of neon signs.

Michel is considered a pioneer of picture collage in the professional world . He was strongly oriented towards the principles of Dadaism and Constructivism , as well as Futurism and sometimes Surrealism . The machine-human problem that often appeared in art at the beginning of the 20th century is often found in Michel's collages with numerous elements that are reminiscent of machines, motors, gears and mechanical constructions. He was one of the first German artists who tried to establish movements, spaces and machine dispositions as a theme in art. In 1926 he created several such pictures for the head of the painting department in the Provincial Museum in Hanover, Alexander Dorner .

At the end of the 1920s he formed a circle of friends with Willi Baumeister , László Moholy-Nagy , Jan Tschichold and Kurt Schwitters . In his own advertising and architecture office in Frankfurt he founded in 1927 with Kurt Schwitters, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart , Max Burchartz , Willi Baumeister, Walter Dexel , Jan Tschichold, Cesar Domela , Ella Bergmann-Michel and other artists the avant-garde and for the development of Typography of the 20th century important "ring of new advertising designers" . In 1928 he took part in exhibitions in the USA with his wife. At the same time he initiated the “Bund Das Neue Frankfurt” with her , in which numerous progressive artists, graphic designers, architects and town planners were represented. Occasionally Michel was also active as an architect. In Vockenhausen there is still a residential building that he designed, now a listed building, and another in the neighboring town of Eppstein, both in the Bauhaus style.

Since the mid-1920s, Michel has been designing shop conversions, gable advertising and advertising graphics in a factual and functional, yet very aesthetic style. In 1933 he was banned from exhibiting by the Reich Chamber of Culture and closed his artist office. He retired to the Taunus, where for a time he lived entirely from trout farming and gave up the art. It was not until 1954 that he returned to artistic activity in his earlier collage style. In 1963 he was shown again with Ella Bergmann-Michel in the exhibition “Pioneers of Collage” in Leverkusen, then in 1968 in New York, 1970 in Paderborn and 1972 in London. His wife died in 1971 and he himself spent the evening of his life in Titisee in the Black Forest, where his daughter lived. The Sprengel Museum in Hanover held a major retrospective in 1988.

Collections, museums

Numerous works can be seen in the Städtische Galerie am Abdinghof in Paderborn , the birthplace of his wife Ella Bergmann-Michel, as well as in the graphic collection of the Wiesbaden Museum . The artist couple's estate is in the Sprengel Museum Hannover. Other museums with his works are the following:

  • Germany: Municipal Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
  • Portugal: Berardo Museum - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Lisbon
  • USA: Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art , Lawrence, KS

Exhibitions

  • Image collage pioneers. Ella Bergmann-Michel and Robert Michel. Works from 1917 to 1962, Leverkusen 1963.
  • Robert and Ella Bergmann-Michel. 50 Year Retrospective 1917-1967, New York 1968.
  • Ella Bergmann-Michel, Robert Michel. Collages, Paderborn 1970.
  • Ella Bergmann-Michel, Robert Michel. Retrospective 1917-1966, London 1972.
  • Ella Bergmann-Michel, Robert Michel. Collages, drawings 1917-1966, Cologne 1974.
  • Robert Michel, Ella Bergmann-Michel, Eppstein 1980.
  • Robert Michel. Works on Paper 1918-1939, New York 1984.
  • Robert Michel, Ella Bergmann-Michel, Düsseldorf 1987.
  • Ella Bergmann-Michel, Robert Michel. Pioneers of the picture collage, Paderborn 1988.
  • Robert Michel, 1897-1983. Collages, paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, advertising, typography, drafts. Sprengel Museum Hannover, December 11, 1988 to February 19, 1989; Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, June 6 to July 23, 1989.
  • Robert Michel and Ella Bergmann-Michel. Museum Wiesbaden, 1999.
  • Robert Michel. The mechanics of the cosmos. Works 1917-1933, Paderborn October 18, 2014 to January 18, 2015.

literature

  • Ella Bergmann-Michel and Robert Michel. Collages, drawings 1917-1966 . Bargera Gallery, Cologne 1974.
  • Franz Menges:  Michel, Robert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 442 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Johann-Karl Schmidt , Robert Michel, In: Contemporary Art in the Deutsche Bank Frankfurt, Klett, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-608-76234-5 .
  • Robert Michel 1897-1983 . Edited by Norbert Nobis and Christian Grohn. Catalog Sprengel Museum Hannover 1988, ISBN 3-89169-045-2
  • Bertold Picard: Rad and rafters, history of Vockenhausen , in the magazine of the Historisches Verein Rhein-Main-Taunus eV, issue 24, 1993, Commission publisher Kramer, Frankfurt am Main, chapter Robert Michel , pp. 125-133, chapter Ella Bergmann-Michel , Pp. 134-138.
  • Andrea Wandschneider (Ed.): Robert Michel. The mechanics of the cosmos. Works 1917-1933, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-86206-418-2 .

Web links

Examples of the work of Robert Michel

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see literature Bertold Picard: Rad und Sparren, Geschichte von Vockenhausen , p. 125
  2. ↑ see web link Jutta Hercher: Ella Bergmann-Michel 1895–1971 painter / photographer / filmmaker on the EBM website
  3. ↑ M. Müller, Ben Rebel: Metropolis, 1988, p. 89
personal data
SURNAME Michel, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Vockenhausen
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1983
Place of death Titisee-Neustadt