Rudi Gruner

Rudi Gruner (born June 30, 1909 in Chemnitz , † October 28, 1984 in Karl-Marx-Stadt ) was a German painter , draftsman and book illustrator . Gruner belongs to the so-called "Lost Generation" of expressive realists and is considered an important exponent of East German post-war art.

life and work

Rudi Gruner was born on June 30th, 1909 in Chemnitz-Gablenz . At the age of six, he wanted to become a "painter". From 1924 to 1928 he completed an apprenticeship as a pattern draftsman at the Technical School for the Textile Industry in Chemnitz. In 1932 he married Charlotte Pannicke.

From 1932 to 1937 he was unemployed, occasionally he worked as a temporary worker in a Chemnitz drugstore. In 1937 he moved to the studio in Bernsdorfer Straße, where he worked until his death in 1984. 1939–1944 he worked as a commercial artist, mainly as a movie poster painter (Regina-Kino, Roter Turm and Lichtburg).

He exhibited his works of art for the first time in 1939 in the Chemnitzer Kunsthütte together with Martha Schrag , Marianne Brandt , Carl Lange, Emil Mund, Heinrich Brenner, Bruno Ziegler and others. Four years later, in 1943 , he took part in the annual exhibition of the Chemnitz art works. From 1944 to 1945 he did military service and from 1945 worked as a freelance painter and draftsman in Chemnitz / Karl-Marx-Stadt. He was in close contact with the former members of the Chemnitz artist group (Brenner, Lange, Mund, Wittig, Schrag, Schestak, etc.), regularly took part in regional art exhibitions and had solo exhibitions in Chemnitz, Halle, Leipzig and Görlitz art galleries.

In 1950 he was accepted into the Association of German Visual Artists . On behalf of the publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. In 1961 he illustrated Leipzig in "The life of Lazarillo vom Tormes". Thousands of steel pen drawings on literature by Honoré de Balzac , François Villon , Giovanni Boccaccio , Guy de Maupassant , Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Gogol , Anton Pawlowitsch Chekhov , Charles Dickens and many others remained unpublished.

Gruner received the Hans Grundig Medal in 1984 , took part in the "Retrospective" exhibition of the Karl-Marx-Stadt municipal art collections and died in his hometown on October 28 of the same year.

In 1985 his works were presented in a solo exhibition in the Galerie Oben in Karl-Marx-Stadt. In 1993 an extensive donation from the artist's estate was made by Charlotte Gruner to the Chemnitz City Art Collections. The Hofgalerie Chemnitz presented his works in a further solo exhibition in 1995. The group exhibition “The Great Old Two” in the Neue Sächsische Galerie (with Wilhelm Rudolph , Hermann Glöckner and Otto Müller-Eibenstock) showed works from the artist's estate in 1997. The solo exhibition "Painting and Drawing" followed in 1999 in the Borssenanger Chemnitz gallery on the artist's 90th birthday.

Rudi Gruner's paintings and drawings can be found in the Chemnitz art collections , the Neue Sächsische Galerie Chemnitz and in private ownership. Murals: "Theater of the working people" in Wolfen (1950), in Chemnitz / Karl-Marx-Stadt in the industrial school (around 1950, with Will Schestak and Willy Wittig ), in the café "Roter Turm" (around 1958), in the VEB Industriewerke (1960s) and in the reception hall of the main post office (1967) - today all painted over or removed. In addition to his freelance work as a painter and draftsman, Gruner gave private lessons to numerous artists, including the poster designer Dieter Netzker (1931–2000), the sculptor Armin Forbrig (1937–2007) and the painter and graphic artist Axel Wunsch (born 1941).

literature

• The life of Lazarillo vom Tormes. Of his luck and misfortune. With illustrations by Rudi Gruner. Reclam, Leipzig 1961
• The great old ones 2nd New Saxon Gallery, Chemnitz 1997.
• Tilo Richter: Rudi Gruner 1909−1984. Painting and drawing, exhibition for the 90th birthday. Passage, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-932900-20-0 .
• Tilo Richter: Rudi Gruner on his 100th birthday. Painting and drawing. Passage, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-938543-68-9 .
• Author: Gruner, Rudi . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 325 .
• Volker Frank: Gruner, Rudi . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 63, Saur, Munich a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23030-1 , p. 579.
• Dietmar Eisold (Ed.): Lexicon artists in the GDR . New Life, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-355-01761-9 , pp. 293 .
• Council of the District of Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dept. of Culture; District art center (ed.): Retrospective 1945 - 1984 . Fine arts in the Karl-Marx-Stadt district, exhibition on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the GDR from September 28, 1984 to February 14, 1985. Druckhaus, Karl-Marx-Stadt 1984, DNB  20982235X .

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudi Gruner in the catalog of the German National Library