Ursula Benser

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Exhibition Galerie Toison, Madrid, Ursula Benser and Werner Heuser , 1960

Ursula Benser , born Ursula Maria Luise Heuser , (* 1. August 1915 in Dusseldorf , † 2. March 2001 in Domburg ) was a German painter of modernity .

Life

Ursula Benser was the daughter of the painter Werner Heuser and his wife Mira, née Sohn-Rethel , the daughter of the painter Karl Rudolf Sohn (1845–1908). Her great-grandfathers were Alfred Rethel on her mother's side and Karl Ferdinand's son on her father's side.

She has been painting since childhood, most of which she acquired artistic and technical skills through her father Werner Heuser. In August 1931 she entered the Düsseldorf Art Academy . She studied in her father's drawing class , with Wilhelm Herberholz (1881–1956) and with Paul Bindel (1894–1973). Here she learned the academic craft, especially portrait painting .

In her last academic year, 1935, she received the master's degree , but was not admitted to an exhibition organized by the academy. Since 1933, the swastika flag waved Nazis on the Düsseldorf Academy building . In the corridors of the Düsseldorf Art Academy , graphics of Expressionism were unanimously condemned and exhibited in a disparaging view in a small show of “Degenerate Art” . Her pictures were also described as "unsuitable" and, for a painter, as "unfeminine".

In October 1936 she married the photographer Walther Benser . She lived in Düsseldorf until 1937. She spent the war years in Berlin , Munich and in Breisgau , mostly separated from her husband. During this time, their three children Petra (1937–1985), Klaus (1940–2003) and Sabine (* 1943) were born. Most recently she stayed with her parents and children at Bollschweil Castle with Baron von Holzing and became friends with his daughter Marie Luise Kaschnitz . In 1945 Ursula Benser painted a portrait of Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg , which Marie Luise Kaschnitz often mentioned in later writings. She supported her family by painting portraits for French officers in the occupied zone in the Black Forest .

After the war, she moved to Hamburg in 1946 . From here Ursula Benser accompanied her husband Walther on study and lecture tours and gathered impressions from Europe, Africa, India, the Far East and the USA. After an exhibition in November 1959 in the Congress for Cultural Freedom , she was asked to make her paintings public in exhibitions in the United States, but refused to expand her artistic engagement so far - like many other women in art - for family reasons. In 1953 she set up her studio in her hometown of Düsseldorf . Only a few exhibitions followed, out of self-restraint in the role of wife and fear of being measured against the names Rethel and Heuser, especially in Düsseldorf. From 1970 to 1972 she devoted herself to painting behind glass in miniature form .

Ursula Benser died on March 2, 2001 in Domburg, the Netherlands , her second adopted home.

plant

She uses pastel , gouache , and watercolor on paper and canvas as painting media . The subjects were the character weaknesses of their own gender. Women and children in the world of tension between dream and day, hope and reality. Pictures with Lemurian figures and poor creatures, such as prostitutes, rag collectors and jugglers, women on strolls or in the madhouse, old ladies or sick city children.

You can find a mixture of contemporary, Daumier , colored Kollwitz and Dix from the women's perspective.

Major works are in private hands.

  • Woman with Liqueur , 1943

  • Untitled, ca.1959

  • Bad Little King , 1958

Exhibitions

literature

  • Walther Benser: We take color photographs. Drawings by Ursula Benser. Dr. Diener and Co. Neumünster i. H. 1957.
  • Heidi Hahn: Aesthetic experience as a reassurance of human existence: viewing art in the work of Marie Luise Kaschnitz. Königshausen & Neumann, 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2023-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ NRZ an Rhein und Ruhr, October 21, 1967, watercolors and gouaches by Ursula Benser in the gallery 666, in the article by K. Sch.
personal data
SURNAME Benser, Ursula
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heuser, Ursula Maria Luise (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 2001
Place of death Domburg