Rudolf Bredow

Rudolf Bredow (born November 2, 1909 in Berlin ; † November 17, 1973 in Bremen ) was a German post-expressionist painter as well as draftsman, scenographer and art teacher.

Bredow's life's work only became known posthumously. It includes around 1000 documented works (watercolors, colored chalk drawings, oil paintings, figurines) and numerous previously unpublished drawings. "Bredow's best works are classic in their simplicity and balance and, for example, artistically equal and often superior to the black-framed watercolors of the late Schmidt-Rottluff."

Life

1930–1934 studied at the arts and crafts school in Berlin with the graphic artist Hans Orlowski (1894–1967), the costume and stage designer Harold Bengen and the painter Max Kaus (1891–1977). After completing his training as a painter and graphic artist for film, advertising, fashion and theater in Berlin. Friends with Bolislav Barlog, known to Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff . 1940–1942 art and drawing teacher in Berlin, then service in the Wehrmacht. 1949 teacher for costume design, painting and drawing at the city. Technical school for textile industry and fashion. 1952–1954 drawing teacher at the Berlin-Neukölln vocational school, 1954 head of the sketching courses of the Berlin women's tailors' guild. Since 1955 he has worked as an art teacher in private and state schools (Bad Sachsa 1955–1956; Langeoog 1957–1958; Hinterzarten 1959; Oberhausen 1961–1964, 1966–1971; Bad Honnef 1964–1966, Schwarzenberg Castle 1971–1973, since 1973 Staatl . Lower Saxony home school Esens / East Friesland). Bredow died on November 17, 1973 during an eye operation in Bremen. Burial in Nienburg. The estate of Bredow came into the possession of Sofie Walter († 2005), Nienburg, by order of the Aurich District Court (1976). In 1989 the Tumulka art collection (Munich) took over a large part of Bredow's works. The painter's written estate has been kept in the holdings of the Archives of Fine Arts of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg since 1992 .

Artistic development

Bredow is one of the artists of the missing generation who were born around the turn of the century and failed to develop due to the turmoil of the two world wars and the art dictatorship of the National Socialists that could have been classified as abstraction or Informel after 1945. When he resumed his work after 1945, Bredow initially resorted to the modes of representation of Cubism and abstraction, especially Expressionism, from which he developed his own post-expressionist form of expression, which began to consolidate from around 1955 and from around 1960/61 until his untimely death in 1973 led to an artistically mature and independent late work.

He was less concerned with reproducing a specific motif. Thematically, as a draftsman, he preferred the sketching observation of nature and fabulous figuration in the foreground, as a watercolorist the condensed visual experience of landscape or still life, in the oil paintings the representation of an idealized, sometimes abstract type of woman. The colored chalk drawings (1955–1969) dominate figurative themes, including depictions of Christ and saints.

Travel played an essential role in Bredow's artistic development. In 1941 and 1949 he stayed on the Baltic Sea, 1957-1958 on the North Sea (Langeoog). In 1955 he went on a Mediterranean cruise to Algeria, Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey at the invitation of the Flensburg shipowner Consul Thomas Entz. In the museums of Paris (1939, 1958–1973) he encountered the works of the masters of modernism. In Spain (1958–1967), Italy (1964–1971) and Ticino (1959, 1972) nature and landscape inspired him.

The travel impressions were clearly reflected in the travel diaries (Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg) and the watercolors: Picturesque places, mountains, coastal landscapes, ports with boats, fruits and flowers, but more rarely people. Characterized by the search for motifs typical of the country, they repeatedly express the longing for color and harmony. With watercolors in particular, Bredow increasingly discovered color as a medium for designing his works, which, especially in those of his more mature phase, are characterized by an increase in the spontaneous in connection with a true intoxication of colors. They express the tension between bright, sometimes even glowing colors and tightly contoured shapes. In his colored chalk works and oil paintings, Bredow also seeks the abstraction of the representational and in it recalls the geometrical formal language of Werner Gilles and the abstract expressionism of Ernst Wilhelm Nay .

Exhibitions (selection)

Bredow only exhibited his works once in his life (in 1954, he participated in a group exhibition at the Berlin-Wilmersdorf art office). The works only attracted attention through posthumous exhibitions:

• 1976 Bremen, Bankhaus Martens and Weyhausen
• 1977 Worpswede, gallery in Lindenallee
• 1978 Nienburg, city museum
• 1979 Berlin, house at Kleistpark
• 1991 Chemnitz, Städt. Art collections
• 1991 Landsberg, New City Museum
• 1991 Meiningen, Staatl. Museums
• 1992 Halle, Staatl. Moritzburg Gallery
• 1992 Leipzig, New Art Association
• 1993 Worpswede, Bollhagen Gallery
• 1993, Aschaffenburg, Will Gallery
• 1994 Ismaning, gallery in the castle park
• 1994 Euskirchen, Rathausgalerie
• 1994 Munich, Franke Art Salon
• 1994 Salzburg, Kutscha Gallery
• 1994 Worpswede, Hubert Gallery
• 1994 Nürtingen, gallery "The stairs"
• 1995 Berlin, Pfundt Gallery
• 1995 Würzburg, Galerie Hetzler
• 1995 Wiesbaden, Old Town Gallery
• 1995 Lübeck, Galerie-Westenhoff
• 1996 Gronau-Epe, Galerie van Almsick
• 1996 Munich, gallery in the OSRAM house
• 2002 Gronau-Epe, Galerie van Almsick
• 2009 Gronau-Epe, Galerie van Almsick - homage for the 100th birthday
• 2013 Munich, Campoi Gallery
• 2019 Gronau-Epe, Galerie van Almsick

Works

Bredow's works include Städt. Chemnitz art collection; State Gallery Moritzburg Halle; Vatican, Rome; State Museum Darmstadt. The written estate is kept in the archive for fine arts in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ (MEISSNER / TAVERNIER 1995)
2. ↑ (HORNIG 1996, 531)

literature

• L. TAVERNIER: Rudolf Bredow, in: Weltkunst 61 (1991), no. 11, p. 1644.
• G. MEISSNER, L. TAVERNIER: Rudolf Bredow (1909–1973). Expressionist out of conviction. With a directory of oil paintings, watercolors, colored chalk and colored figurines. Munich: Hirmer 1995.
• G. MEISSNER: Rudolf Bredow, in: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon , Vol. 14, Munich / Leipzig: Saur 1996, pp. 60–61.
• CHR. HORNIG: Rudolf Bredow. In: Weltkunst 66 (1996), no. 5, p. 531.
• L. TAVERNIER: Rudolf Bredow, in: Dictionary of Art , vol. 4, London / New York: MacMillan 1996, p. 732.
• I. MÜLLER: Rudolf Bredow. www.kunstmarkt.com (September 12, 2001)

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Bredow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Search for Rudolf Bredow in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
• Bredow on kunstmarkt.com