Viktor Löwenfeld (art teacher)

Viktor Löwenfeld (born March 21, 1903 in Linz , Austria-Hungary ; died 1960 ) was an Austro-American art teacher.

Life

Viktor Löwenfeld was a son of Markus Löwenfeld and Emilie Reinisch. He studied art at the Vienna School of Applied Arts with Franz Čižek and psychology at the university with Karl Bühler . From 1923 he also worked at the Hohe Warte school for the blind , where he introduced two-week-hour modeling lessons. In 1926 he received the diploma. In 1928 he became head of the art department at the Zwi Perez Chajes School in Vienna and professor of art education at the university.

After Austria's annexation in 1938, he emigrated to England and from there to the USA, where he changed his family name. Lowenfeld worked from 1939 as a lecturer in art at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. From 1945 he curated the African art collection there. The muralist John T. Biggers (1924-2001) was a student. Lowenfeld served in the US Army during World War II and became a US citizen in 1946. From 1946 he worked as a professor of art education at Penn State University and headed the Department of Art Education from 1957.

Lowenfeld was active in the National Art Education Association (NAEA) and in the National Committee on Art Education and had an influence on the training of elementary school teachers. The NAEA awards a Lowenfeld Award every year , which obliges one to attend a Lowenfeld Lecture .

Fonts (selection)

• with Ludwig Münz : Plastic works of blind people. Rohrer, Brno 1935.
• The nature of creative activity experimental and comparative studies of visual and non-visual sources of drawing, painting, and sculpture by means of the artistic products of weak sighted and blind subjects and of the art of different epochs and cultures. Translation into English by Oscar Adolf Oeser . Routledge & Paul, London 1952.
• Your child and his art; a guide for parents. Macmillan, New York 1954.
  • The child's art . Translation of Elisabeth Innis. Public life, Frankfurt am Main 1957.
• with W. Lambert Brittain: Creative and mental growth. Macmillan, New York 1964.
  • On the essence of creative design. Europ. Verl.-Anst., Frankfurt a. M. 1960.

over 100 magazine articles

literature

• Löwenfeld, Viktor. In: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin, 18th to 20th centuries . 2002, p. 853.
• Rudolf Arnheim : Viktor Löwenfeld and the sense of touch. In: Rudolf Arnheim: New contributions . Translation Gerhard Ammelburger. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1986, ISBN 978-3-77012-341-4 , pp. 309–322.
• Susan K Leshnoff: Viktor Lowenfeld: Portrait of a Young Art Teacher in Vienna in the 1930s. In: Studies in Art Education, Vol. 54, No. 2 (winter 2013), pp. 158–170.

Web links

• Literature by and about Lowenfeld, Viktor in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Lowenfeld, Viktor in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Arthur D. Efland: Viktor Lowenfeld (1903-1960). Early Career and Influences, Lowenfeld's American Career, Influence on Art Education. At StateUniversity.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lowenfeld Lectures , as of 2016