Walter Ast

Walter Ast (born February 16, 1884 in Ravensburg , † February 8, 1976 in Reutlingen ) was a German painter , draftsman , graphic artist and art teacher .

Live and act

Walter Ast was born in Ravensburg. His grandfather was a pharmacist there; the daughter Luise Frauer (1857–1949) had married the judicial assessor Friedrich Ast (1847–1933), a farmer's son from Wurmberg near Pforzheim, in Ravensburg in 1877. When Fritz Ast was transferred to Ellwangen in 1892, the family moved to the Ostalb, where Walter Ast attended the local grammar school. The father was a judge at the Ellwang District Court until 1919, most recently as District Court Director. After finishing school, Walter Ast completed his military service as a one-year volunteer in Ulm in 1902/03.

He then began studying law in Munich, which he broke off after five semesters to become a painter. To this end, he attended Moritz Heymann's private art school from 1906 , which prepared him for attending the art academy. In 1910 Ast was enrolled at the Munich Art Academy and studied with Hugo von Habermann and Hermann Groeber . Walter Ast was able to take part in exhibitions at the Munich Secession while still a student . With the outbreak of the First World War, Ast became a soldier and was deployed in France. In 1918 he was dismissed as first lieutenant in the Landwehr (reserve officer). During the war, in July 1915, Ast had married the drawing teacher Hanna Fesca in Stuttgart (the marriage resulted in two daughters and a son who died in World War II).

After the war, Ast first worked as a freelance artist in Ellwangen, where he worked as a portraitist and landscape painter. In the early 1920s, Ast trained as an art teacher at the Berlin State Art School ; there he came into contact with the reform pedagogical ideas of Philipp Franck , which significantly influenced his professional approach as a teacher. In 1923 he passed the Prussian state examination for art educators. After the legal traineeship in Cannstatt and the Württemberg exams for art lessons at secondary schools in Stuttgart, the von Ellwangen family moved to Reutlingen, where Walter Ast got a job as a teacher in 1925. From 1925 to 1949 Ast worked as a teacher (most recently senior teacher) at the Oberrealschule (today's Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium) in Reutlingen; among his students in Reutlingen art class are u. a. Karl Langenbacher , HAP Grieshaber and Arthur Fauser .

Walter Ast's most productive creative period was in the years after the First World War in Ellwangen, where, in addition to numerous portraits, he mainly created cityscapes and landscapes. Later in Reutlingen, the company's own artistic production took a back seat. Only after his retirement was Ast able to devote himself more to painting again. The number of his works remained manageable, since Ast was no longer dependent on sales proceeds due to the school service. For this reason, his works have always been rarely represented on the art market.

Solo exhibitions

• Walter Ast. Oil paintings, watercolors, graphics - a review , Spendhaus Reutlingen, January 12 to February 2, 1975
• City - landscapes. Reutlingen in paintings by Walter Ast (1884–1976) , Reutlingen Local History Museum, June 19 to August 15, 1999
• Walter Ast , Albmaler Museum Münsingen, April 11 to July 21, 2019

literature

• Ellwanger yearbook. Volume 26, 1975/76, p. 322 (Nekrolog).
• Market in Ellwangen. Walter Ast (1884–1976) would now be 100 years old. In: Ostalb - Einhorn, Volume 11, 1984, p. 202.
• City of Ellwangen / Kunstverein Ellwangen (ed.): The image of a city. The art of the 20th century in Ellwangen. Aalen 2014, p. 185