Senta Geissler

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Senta Geißler (born July 24, 1902 in Heidelberg ; † October 19, 2000 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ) was a German painter . She was one of the first women to study art from 1919 at the Karlsruhe Art Academy .

Life

Her father, a master brewer by trade, worked as a well-paid employee in the Schroedl brewery in Heidelberg. Senta Geißler also had a brother who, however, died at the age of a few months, so that she received the full attention of her parents. This enabled her daughter to train as an artist. Her great uncle, Wilhelm Nagel (1866–1945), who taught in Karlsruhe both at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and at the Grand Ducal School of Painters in Karlsruhe , brought Geißler closer to the art of drawing on excursions together.

The uncle convinced the parents of the artistic talent of their daughter, and Senta Geißler enrolled in the painting school in Karlsruhe . She switched to the art academy after it was reorganized and renamed the Baden State Art School from the winter semester 1919 onwards, and she attended a drawing course. In the academic year 1920/21 she took the preparatory class, in 1921/22 the “specialist class for painters” (drawing class) with Friedrich Fehr . In the following year of study she became a master class student with Professor Albert Haueisen , whom she admired and with whom she stayed in contact even after her studies. It was he who brought her closer to the power of colors, sharpened her eyes and aroused the artist's enthusiasm for depictions of landscapes and nature. In 1925 she returned to Heidelberg and moved into her own studio in her parents' house.

In the winter of 1926 she met her future husband, the doctor Albert Rohrbach from Ludwigshafen. He was very interested in art, was involved in various art associations, including chairman of the Ludwigshafen art association and an art collector. Rohrbach was able to inspire Geißler for modern art , which influenced its development. Until then it was more the German Impressionists like Max Liebermann who had impressed Senta Geißler, but now you can clearly feel the confrontation with the French, especially with Paul Cézanne and later with Henri Matisse .

At the end of the 1920s she had her first artistic successes, in 1927 she had her first solo exhibition, a year later she exhibited her work "Spring in Rohrbach" (1926) at the major annual art exhibition in Baden-Baden , which the state eventually acquired. In 1930 the city of Heidelberg bought her work "Rosen" (1930), which was followed by an exhibition at the Heidelberger Kunstverein. On view were delicate colored drawings, in the style of Japonism , of which the most beautiful motifs were printed on postcards. In 1932 Geißler and Rohrbach married and moved to Ludwigshafen. In the same year the city of Ludwigshafen acquired the work “White Anemones” (1930).

With the takeover of the Nazis finally a critical time began: Rohrbach was decided dissidents who made no secret of his dislike and lived therefore in constant danger. In addition, he was heavily dependent on drugs, lost his medical license; the practice was closed and the shared apartment was closed. The couple moved back to the parents of Geissler in Heidelberg. From the time of National Socialism and from the time after the Second World War , two works with landscapes by the artist that were created around 1940 have been preserved, otherwise no new artistic activities could be identified. Geissler only sent some older works to exhibitions and supported her husband, who had received his medical license again after various withdrawals and was able to practice as a doctor.

Her husband died in 1956, and after a phase of loneliness, depression and lack of means, she found her way back to painting a year and a half later. At first it followed on from the previous style. Numerous still lifes were created , albeit more focused on isolated objects, and the works appeared more concentrated and full. She used different colors and image carriers. In just a few months, Senta Geißler created a series of large-format paintings for the reconstruction of Ludwigshafen in 1958, in which she captured the destroyed city center and documented the new post-war buildings. People were less and less to be found in her work, until she finally only painted empty works.

In the summer of 1958 she traveled to Italy and developed a new way of working. It is increasingly rare for the works to be created directly in front of the motif, rather from sketches, and later also from photographs or postcards. Her style changed, the impressionistic elements disappeared, but the works were more structured, ordered, like “built” pictorial architecture. Another trip to Italy followed in the following year, and after the death of her mother in 1959 Senta Geißler decided to emigrate entirely to Italy. After various stations, she finally lived in Agrigento . Numerous sketches were made here, always with the architecture in view, but also still lifes with arranged objects, which she often photographed from 1970 onwards. Her work continued to show changes. The architectures became more abstract, more compact; different colors created different moods, now she used photos as templates for her works.

In 1974 Geißler returned to Ludwigshafen, was involved in various artists' associations and began to organize the artistic estate of her deceased husband. She was rarely artistically active herself. She died at the age of 98 in 2000.

The artist's estate is kept in the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, which also includes Albert Rohrbach's art collection. The Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie of the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum and the Stadtmuseum Ludwigshafen jointly dedicated a retrospective exhibition to the artist in summer 2008.

literature

  • Karoline Hille: Senta Geißler: an artist's life , Berlin: Ed. Ebersbach 2008 ISBN 978-3-938740-73-6
  • Anne-Kathrin Herber: Women at German Art Academies in the 20th Century. Training opportunities for female artists from 1919 with special consideration of the South German art academies, (dissertation) Heidelberg 2009

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwigshafen: Senta Geißler exhibition , on mrn-news.de, accessed June 22, 2015

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Geissler, Senta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 2000
Place of death Ludwigshafen am Rhein