Umbo

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Umbo (actually: Otto Maximilian Umbehr ; born January 18, 1902 in Düsseldorf ; † May 13, 1980 in Hanover ) was a German photographer and photojournalist .

Life

Umbo was a Bauhaus student in Weimar from 1921 to 1923 and was aesthetically influenced by Johannes Itten's basic teaching . Then he went to Berlin , one of the international artistic hotspots in the 1920s. Here he came to photography in 1926 and practically immediately became one of the founders of a new photographic aesthetic with innovative portraits of Berlin bohemians . In the years that followed, his photos were printed in various newspapers and magazines and shown in important exhibitions. The end of 1928 was umbo founding member of the Photo Agency Dephot ( German Photo Service GmbH ), which until the seizure of power by the Nazis coined in 1933 a new style in photojournalism.

During the National Socialist era , he worked as a photo journalist, but had little opportunity as an artist to find public resonance with his visual aesthetics. In 1943 his archive in Berlin with an estimated 50,000–60,000 negatives was destroyed in a bomb attack, so that today only relatively few of his works have survived . A folder with contact sheets of his dance photographs survived the attack by chance and is now in the German Dance Archive in Cologne .

In the turmoil of war and post-war Umbo led to Hanover . He could no longer build on his earlier successes from the time of the Weimar Republic . There he mainly worked for the Kestner Society . His vintages from this period are very rare today and are in great demand again.

Alongside László Moholy-Nagy, Umbo is considered the most important photographer at the Bauhaus .

photography

Harsh light-shadow contrasts as well as unusual perspectives and details are characteristic of Umbo's black and white photographs. With their expressiveness and poetic perspective, they set themselves apart from the new, factual mainstream within German photographic art in the 1920s, as represented by Sander , Renger-Patzsch and Blossfeldt . The main theme of his work is the big city, which he portrays from the point of view of the strollers . His work also includes photomontages and collages .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1928: New Paths of Photography , Jena Art Association
  • 1928: Umbo, portraits , Toppkeller , Berlin
  • 1928/1929: Umbo, hello - your face , 'Die Lunte' restaurant, Berlin
  • 1929: Contemporary photography, Museum Folkwang, Essen (further positions: Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf, Berlin; Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover; atrium of the New Town Hall, Dresden; exhibition building on Adolf-Mittag-See, Magdeburg; Kunstverein Rostock)
  • 1929: International exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund 'Film und Foto' , Stuttgart (further stations: Zurich, Berlin, Danzig, Vienna, Agram)
  • 1930: Das Lichtbild - International Exhibition , Munich (further stations: Essen, Düsseldorf, Dessau, Breslau)
  • 1932: Modern European Photographers, Julien Levy Gallery, New York
  • 1933: The camera - exhibition for photography, printing and reproduction, halls of the Berlin exhibition office , Berlin (further station: Stuttgart)
  • 1968: 50 years of Bauhaus, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
  • 1969: The photomontage. History and essence of an art form , Ingolstadt (further station: Municipal Art Gallery, Bochum)
  • 1978: Paris - Berlin 1900-1933. Rapports et Contrastes France - Allemagne , Center National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris
  • 1979: Umbo. Photographs 1925-1933 , Kunstmuseum, Hanover
  • 1979: Photography as Art 1879-1979. Art as Photography 1949-1979 , Tiroler Landesmuseum, Innsbruck (further stations: Linz, Graz, Vienna)
  • 1979: Umbo. Photographs 1927-1930 , Galerie Rudolf Kicken, Cologne
  • 1980: Avantgarde Photography in Germany 1919-1939 , San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
  • 1982: Bauhaus Photographs , Rudolf Kicken Gallery, Cologne
  • 1983: Bauhaus Photography, Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart
  • 1984: Umbo - photographs after 1945 , Galerie Lichtblick, Cologne
  • 1987: Umbo - photographs after 1945, Galerie Fotohof, Salzburg
  • 1988: Stations of Modernity. The most important art exhibitions of the 20th century in Germany , Berlinische Galerie, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
  • 1989: On the Art of Fixing a Shadow. One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography , National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
  • 1994: Photography at the Bauhaus , Tel Aviv Museum of Art
  • 1995: Portraits in Modernism , Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
  • 1995: UMBO. From Bauhaus to Photo Journalism , Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf (further positions: Bauhaus Archive Berlin; Centennial Hall Hoechst, Frankfurt / Main; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Center national de la photographie, Paris; Kestner Society, Hanover; Art Museum Bern)
  • 2000: Umbo , Kicken Berlin
  • 2002: The second face - metamorphoses of the photographic portrait , Deutsches Museum, Munich
  • 2004: Carte Blanche à Kicken Berlin , Musée de la Photographie et de l'Image, Nice
  • 2005: Portrait im Aufbruch / Portraits of an Age , Albertina, Vienna, and Neue Galerie, New York
  • 2007: Photo: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945 , National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
  • 2009: Umbo 1952 , Kicken Berlin
  • 2014: RealSurreal. Masterpieces of Avant-Garde Photography. The new way of seeing 1920-1950. Siegert Collection , Wolfsburg Art Museum
  • 2014: Object: Photo. Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection , The Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 2016: The Radical Eye. Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection , Tate Modern, London
  • 2016: 130% Sprengel. UMBO estate , Sprengel Museum, Hanover
  • 2017: Made in Germany. German Photography from the 19th Century until Today , Shanghai Center of Photography
  • 2019: UMBO. Photographer , Sprengel Museum , Hanover; then 2020 Berlinische Galerie

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Portrait of Umbo - Otto Umbehr (1902-1980) in FAZ, August 24, 1996, No. 197, page B5
personal data
SURNAME Umbo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Umbehr, Otto Maximilian (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer and photojournalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1980
Place of death Hanover