Rolf Dettmann

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Rolf Dettmann (born February 15, 1915 in Mönchengladbach ; † March 7, 1992 ) was a German painter , draftsman , illustrator and graphic artist .

Life

Dettmann was born as the son of the Protestant Justice Secretary Carl Franz-Theodor Dettmann (* 1871), born in Neu Damerow , and his wife Maria Anna Wachter (* 1877), a Catholic watchmaker's daughter from Straubing , with his twin sister Irene. He grew up among eight siblings in the Mönchengladbach district of Pesch , where he attended the Charlotte School. At the age of 14 he switched to the advanced school in Rheydt in 1928 . He received his first artistic education from the art and drawing teacher Hermann Dienz there until 1932. In the summer semester of 1933, he enrolled at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . After a "trial semester" with Werner Heuser , he took the drawing class of Julius Paul Junghanns in the following winter semester .

As a pupil of Junghanns' drawing class, he took part in a summer stay in 1934 that Junghanns and Werner Peiner undertook together in Kronenburg in the Eifel (today a district of Dahlem in the Euskirchen district). Obviously impressed by the person and the skills of Peiner, he contacted him after his summer stay to apply as a student for his class. For the winter semester 1934/1935 he was allowed to switch to his class. The reason for the change was, however, the aversion that Dettmann shared with Peiner, the aversion to Impressionism or the "trend of the Düsseldorf School " at the time, which he expressed in the pictures of the painters Wilhelm Schmurr and Carl Ederer . Peiner introduced Dettmann to Expressionism and trained him in monumental painting . When Peiner left the Düsseldorf Academy to open a country academy in Kronenburg in 1936, Dettmann followed him there with four other fellow students. In 1938 the Landakademie became an independent art college, the Hermann Göring Master School for Painting . From the beginning, the now twelve students were busy with government contracts.

In 1939 Dettmann was called up for military service in the Wehrmacht . He left the academy without having achieved the degree of a master's degree. In Dresden he was trained as a radio operator. Because of a heart condition, he was unable to fly, but was retrained to become an instructor. Since he was drafted, his interest in the academy diminished. Peiner was so angry about Dettmann's behavior that he sent his student notice in 1942. In 1942 Dettmann married Katharina Brandenburg (1917-2010) from Kronenburger. The couple had two daughters: in 1943 the first daughter was born near an Upper Austrian location, and in 1945 the second daughter was born in Kronenburg. After the end of the war, he was briefly captured by the US in Upper Austria.

Since June 1945 he was back in Kronenburg and took care of the livelihood of his young family by helping relatives in agriculture, forest work and painting and drawing. Arrested artistically in a retrospective painting style similar to that of the old masters and the picture schemes of the 1930s and early 1940s, it took him 25 years to find his own new style. Dettmann was repeatedly rejected by gallery owners when he presented his works. Nevertheless, he managed to keep himself financially independent by commissioning paintings for public buildings or templates for church windows. It was not until the mid-1960s that he created a style of painting and drawing that appealed to a wider audience. In the 1970s he was able to achieve an artistic breakthrough with frottage monotypes and “Dürer Metamorphoses”, but he never achieved the national recognition he had dreamed of.

In 1985 he received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon and in 1987 the Rhineland Thaler from the Rhineland Regional Council.

exhibition

  • 2015: Metamorphoses. Rolf Dettmann 1915–1992 , Kunstforum Eifel, Schleiden-Gemünd

literature

  • The portrait: Rolf Dettmann. Picture maker in Kronenburg . In: Heimatjahrbuch Vulkaneifel . 1982, p. 139 ( online ).
  • Matthias Weber : The picture maker from Kronenburg. Rolf Dettmann on his 70th birthday on February 25, 1985 . In: Heimatjahrbuch Vulkaneifel . 1985, p. 99 ( online ).
  • Matthias Weber: In memory of Rolf Dettmann . In: Heimatjahrbuch Vulkaneifel . 1993, p. 42 f. ( online ).
  • Dettmann, Rolf . In: Andreas Beyer , Bénédicte Savoy , Wolf Tegethoff , Eberhard König : General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples . Volume 26: Delwaide – Dewagut . KG Saur, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-22766-3 , p. 490.
  • Cornelia Stachnik: Rolf Dettmann (1915–1992). A painter and graphic artist from Kronenburg / Eifel . Inaugural dissertation, Bonn 2000.
  • Dieter Pesch: Metamorphoses. Rolf Dettmann 1915–1992 . Grin, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-656-96705-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New exhibition in the Eifel Art Forum , article from June 26, 2015 in the eifelon.de portal , accessed on February 22, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Dettmann, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, draftsman, illustrator and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Mönchengladbach
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1992