Theodor Gansen

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Theodor "Theo" Gansen (born April 8, 1887 in Lebach , Saarlouis district ; † on or shortly before May 13, 1956 in Bonn ) was a German landscape , architecture , interior and still life painter from the Düsseldorf School . He also worked as a restorer and as an art forger of clay figures, which he brought into circulation as "Middle Rhine clay sculptures of the early 15th century" for about ten years.

Life

Gansen was the second oldest of six children of the magistrate Theodor Gansen and his wife Franzisca Clara, née Kinscherf. He grew up in Lebach, where he attended Catholic elementary school from 1893. Then he went to a high school and acquired the university entrance qualification. In 1906 he enrolled to study painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . After completing his basic studies, he moved to the University of Fine Arts in Dresden and enrolled in the "Conservation and Restoration of Art and Cultural Assets" course, which is considered one of the oldest specialist courses at university level. Gansen also took courses in landscape and church painting (wall painting) there. Under the direction of the Bonn painter Carl Nonn , whom he had met during the semester break, Gansen was one of the founders of the “Bonner Künstlerbund” in 1909, which soon began to hold art exhibitions in the Villa Obernier . Attracted by news about the planned establishment of an institute for “Technology of Painting” in Stuttgart , Gansen moved from the Dresden Academy to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart , where he enrolled in the subject of “fine art” and took courses in landscape and genre painting and probably received his academy letter before the outbreak of World War I , when he was a 27-year-old recruit.

After the war, Gansen settled in Bonn as a painter and kept himself afloat as a painter of frescoes and decorations for restaurants, stairwells, reception and event halls, churches and chapels. He painted sketches, watercolors and oil paintings of the interiors he encountered, which he sold on the side. In November 1921 he and two Rhineland communities took part in the “Great (Rhine) Romantics Exhibition in the City Museum Villa Obernier” in Bonn. In connection with upcoming renovation work on palaces and castles, he toured the Rhine and the Eifel. Around 1923 he turned increasingly to the restoration of church sculptures and small sculptures. In order to deepen his specialist knowledge, he studied the relevant art historical literature and visited museums and specialist exhibitions with medieval exhibits throughout Germany.

Because at that time from unguarded churches and stations of the cross many religious statues had been stolen, he also received orders for the production of replicas . This gave him the idea of ​​making “old” statues of the Virgin Mary and Vespers images from clay without direct reference to a specific original. Between 1926 and 1936 he made around five to six clay figures per year that look so deceptively real that they could be offered and sold as medieval originals through middlemen and dealers in southern Germany and the Rhineland. He got the sound from pits in the region. As an accomplished restorer, he knew how to use techniques to artificially age both the inner cavity and the recordings and frames of the clay figures. Almost all of his objects also show signs of wear and tear that are typical of their time, such as chipping and scratches, mutilations on protruding limbs, deliberately reworked creases of clothing and signs of earlier, supposedly improperly carried out cleaning. Gansen ended these practices when he was reported anonymously in October 1936. In the following police investigations, which were carried out in Bonn, he confessed to "having made clay sculptures with the intention of deceiving in the old style".

After his (unconfirmed) conviction, he rarely appeared in public. However, he continued to live as a freelance artist and mainly created landscapes and still lifes. On May 13, 1956, he was found dead in his Bonn apartment and soon afterwards was buried in the company of a large community of art lovers in Bonn's north cemetery.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Museum Kunstpalast : Artists from the Düsseldorf School of Painting (selection, as of November 2016, PDF )
  2. ↑ Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History , Volume 23 (1978), p. 55
  3. ↑ General-Anzeiger Bonn , edition of May 24, 1956
personal data
SURNAME Gansen, Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gansen, Theo (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landscape, architecture, interior and still life painter from the Düsseldorf School
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Lebach , Saarlouis district
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1956
Place of death Bonn