Walter Ophey
Walter Hugo Ophey (born March 25, 1882 in Eupen ; † January 11, 1930 in Düsseldorf ) was a German painter and graphic artist . Along with August Macke , Heinrich Nauen and others, he was one of the most important representatives of Rhenish Expressionism .
Life
Childhood and youth
Walter Ophey was born as the son of the accountant Emil Ophey (* 1842 in Eupen; † 1888 ibid), who came from a Prussian civil servant family from the Lower Rhine region around Kevelaer , and his wife Louise Ophey (née Haeber, * 1853 in Saarlouis ; † 1916 in Eupen), daughter of the customs and tax collector Friedrich Haeber, born in Eupen. The mother came from a noble French family on the maternal side. Ophey spent his childhood with his two siblings, Anna Elisabeth (1880-1911), two years older, and Friedrich Otto (1883-1964), three years younger, with whom he had a striking external resemblance. After his father's death on the evening of December 23, 1888, the six-year-old's bond with his mother, who resumed her teaching profession, became stronger. Because of his poor academic performance, his mother sent him to the Swiss Institute, a private school in Detmold, in the spring of 1898 . In 1899 Ophey successfully finished school with the "one year old" and decided to become an artist. In the winter semester of 1899 he enrolled as a guest student at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen and attended the courses in figure and landscape drawing as well as watercolor painting with Franz Reiff . He also attended evening courses at the Aachen School of Applied Arts . In 1900 he was employed in the studio of the sculptor Karl Krauss , who was a professor of modeling in Aachen.
Art Academy Düsseldorf
In October 1900, Walter Ophey began his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and began in the elementary class under the direction of Ernst Roeber and Willy Spatz , in line with the academy's training path . In the first years of his time at the academy, Ophey developed friendly relations with Albert Pehle , a "sculptor and interior decorator from Lippstadt who created numerous altar ensembles and individual figures for Rhenish and Westphalian churches" . With Heinz May (1878–1954), who studied at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1901 to 1908, Ophey shared a studio in Albert Pehle's house on Drakeplatz in Düsseldorf- Oberkassel . There was a close artistic connection with Josef Kohlschein until 1915, but this waned as Ophey developed into a protagonist of Rhenish modernism.
From November 1904 he attended Eugen Dücker's landscape class and became his master class student around 1905. This year the artistic breakthrough began for Ophey with the first participation in the sales exhibition of the art association for the Rhineland and Westphalia . In addition, Alfred Flechtheim is said to have bought the first picture from Ophey this year. Walter Ophey achieved his first major success in 1906 at the nationally recognized German art exhibition in Cologne's Flora , which lasted from May to November . Among other works by Ophey was the postcard motif Aus der Flora , 1906 - one of a total of ten motifs - which shows a view of the flora.
Sonderbund
In 1909 Ophey and the Düsseldorf painters Julius Bretz , Max Clarenbach , August Deusser , Wilhelm Schmurr and others joined forces and founded the Sonderbund group , the name of which referred to the special exhibition held in May 1908 in the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle . The group, which previously included seven artists, was expanded to include the artists Otto von Wätjen , Ernst te Peerdt , Rudolf Bosselt (1871–1938) and the typographer Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke (1878–1965). Christian Rohlfs , who came from Hagen and was given an artistic role model by the younger members, was added later. In the following years it developed into one of the most important exhibition movements of modernism in Germany. Its first chairman was Karl Ernst Osthaus , his deputy the Cologne cigarette manufacturer Josef Feinhals .
Several joint exhibitions took place under the Sonderbund group . On May 24, 1912, the international art exhibition of the Sonderbund Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler zu Cöln 1912 was opened, the fourth and most important exhibition of the Sonderbund , which is considered the most important presentation of European modernism before the First World War and "in its structure a direct model of the [...] , Armory Show ', which in a year later, New York took place. " was. 577 paintings and drawings as well as 56 sculptures from seven countries were shown. Vincent van Gogh alone was represented with over 110 works. Other artists involved included Paul Cézanne , Paul Gauguin , Pablo Picasso , Pierre Bonnard , Paul Signac and Henry Edmond Cross . Walter Ophey was represented with three paintings from 1912, a tulip pot , hyacinths and tulips and hyacinths - all three works together were awarded orange tulips in the exhibition catalog at the time - and Villa in Eitdorf , created around 1911. The group officially disbanded in 1915.
First trip to Italy and stay in Paris
In 1910 Walter Ophey traveled with the painters Carl Schmitz-Pleis (1877–1943) and Carl Plückebaum (1880–1952) to Italy for three months. They arrived in Rome on February 23 by train via Basel . In Sorrento , on the Gulf of Naples , Ophey made a number of works. At the beginning of April Ophey wrote from Positano , on the Amalfi coast , where the largest bundle of this trip was made and which was considered a secret tip among German artists: “It is the most wonderful nest in the world [...], very quiet, picturesque and really beautiful. I would actually have to stay here for a whole year to really benefit artistically. ” After a few days in Rome, he traveled on to Florence alone , where he stayed for a fortnight. Under the impression of the art treasures of this city, his own artistic work depressed him. At the end of May he was in Venice and attended the Biennale , the German contribution of which was organized by the Munich Secession .
From October to the beginning of November 1911 Ophey stayed in Paris for four weeks . Here he first visited the autumn salon before visiting the Louvre , where he met Heinrich Nauen , who was represented in the exhibition, and August von der Heydt , who gave him the opportunity to visit the leading gallery owners. The art dealer Sagot, whom he visited several times, introduced him to the Cubist works of Pablo Picasso. In the house of Ambroise Vollard he got to know his extensive collection of works by Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. After a visit by the gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel to his private apartment, where Ophey got to know one of the most remarkable collections of French Impressionism, he wrote home overwhelmed: “ Degas' fabulous pastels [...]. Then the finest Monets , with very strong yet airy colors. Cézanne's still life, an immense number of Renoirs . Some hang over the bedroom vanity. A still life by Manet on the door. More valuable than the entire Düsseldorf Kunsthalle. ” And in the same letter it said: “ How poor and dead Düsseldorf is is becoming ever clearer to me. The artistic suggestion is zero. Here you have more in a few days than in Düsseldorf in ten long years. You're still relatively young and you have the form of painting that the French had forty years ago. All my skills just seem ridiculous here. "
War years
During the First World War , Ophey and his garrison were relocated to Culm as a Landsturmmann at the beginning of January 1915 . In January 1915 he fell ill with severe pneumonia and was transferred to a hospital in the middle of the same month . Discharged from active military service, he returned to Düsseldorf at the beginning of June 1915. Between November 1916 and November 1918 he was posted to the Düsseldorf military office. Due to the regular work and the income from wages, Ophey was able to exhibit his works again. In January 1917 he was able to show a series of paintings in the Bonn Society for Literature and Art as well as in the exhibition Die Kunst im Krieg in the Tietz department store in Düsseldorf, a series of chalk drawings that were made during his stay in the hospital.
On February 12, 1917, Walter Ophey married Bernhardine Bornemann (1879–1968), whom he had met through Albert Pehle - who had been married to her sister and piano teacher Aenne Bornemann since 1903 - and Josef Kohlschein around 1904 in Düsseldorf. The church wedding took place on February 20th in the Catholic parish church in Bigge .
The Young Rhineland and the Rhenish Secession
The exhibition The Young Rhineland took place at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in January 1918 . It was organized by Walter Cohen . In November of the same year, an appeal written by Adolf Uzarski , Herbert Eulenberg and Arthur Kaufmann was sent to Walter Ophey and 45 other artists. The aim of the appeal was to “pool the cultural activities in the Rhineland [...] that had been dispersed by the war in order to emphasize the artistic importance of the region.” Ophey became a member of the artists' association Das Junge Rheinland in 1919 - the name was taken from the one that took place in January Exhibition - which he co-founded in Düsseldorf that same year.
Immediately after the exhibition Deutsche Kunst Düsseldorf 1928 , which opened on May 2, 1928, Das Junge Rheinland , the Rheingruppe and a number of Düsseldorf artists joined together to form an interest group called the "Rheinische Sezession". Johann Baptist Hermann Hundt , Arthur Kaufmann, Walter Ophey, Otto Pankok , Bernhard Sopher and Heinz Tappeser formed the board. Ophey, who in the run-up to the exhibition in July 1927 traveled to Würzburg and Nuremberg to select the works and in August to Hamburg to visit the exhibition of contemporary European art at the Hamburger Kunstverein , was a member of this group and also a member of the jury “bei this with 800 works and almost 400 artists the most comprehensive representation of German modernism before the iconoclasm of the National Socialists. ” Walter Ophey exhibited four oil paintings, one of which, fair booths from 1926, was shown in the catalog. The oil painting Heller Tag , 1927–1928, was bought by Karl Koetschau for the Düsseldorf Art Museum .
Second trip to Italy
In April 1924, Ophey set out on a train trip to Tuscany . When he arrived in San Gimignano , he heard from his wife by urgent telegram that his son Ulrich Nikolaus, who was born on October 18, 1920, was ill, which forced him to return to Düsseldorf immediately. The death of his son on April 14th, who had died of meningitis , "plunged Ophey into a deep depression that will continue to rule his life in phases in the years to come and increasingly affect his physical condition." He collapsed at the end of September his wife went to Italy, where they visited the cities of Florence , San Gimignano, Siena and Rome .
At the beginning of May 1925, Ophey and Konrad Niermann set out on another study trip to Sicily . It led via Genoa to Naples , where they visited Pompei and Paestum . In mid-May they came - via Trapani and Marsala - to Sciacca and Agrigento , in order to get inland from there. Via Caltanissetta they drove on to Syracusa and spent a few days in Taormina . At the end of May they started their journey home with a stay in Messina . Ophey exhibited the works created during the trip "in August and September 1925 at a joint exhibition with Marianne von Werefkin and at an exhibition in the Essen Art Museum."
Last years
From 1927 Ophey's health had deteriorated due to increasing asthmatic attacks and heart problems. Spas at the Baltic Sea , in the Harz Mountains and, most recently, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen did not improve his health. Walter Ophey died on January 11, 1930 at the age of 47 in Düsseldorf. In 1950 Joseph Beuys made the grave slab (designed by Ewald Mataré ) for Walter Ophey and his son Ulrich Nikolaus, who died early.
Walter Ophey was a member of the German Association of Artists .
plant
Early work
Ophey's artistic work begins with the watercolor Fantastic Story , the earliest known and preserved work, from 1894. From the mid-1890s, the first sketches of the Eupen area were made. He found motifs for his pictures, which he used until around 1906, particularly in the Vesdre valley and in the towns of Kettenis , Nispert and Buschberg between Aachen and Eupen . By 1904 he made charcoal and pencil drawings based on plaster busts, detailed anatomical studies based on living models and a few portraits. During the first years of study at the art academy with Eugen Dücker, which began in 1904, Ophey solidified his technique in open-air painting, based on the motif willow, on which he had been working since 1900.
With the painting Beim Brandts Jupp , a willow motif, Ophey, according to his own statements, achieved his artistic breakthrough in spring 1905. The square picture shows two willow trunks and a third willow tree on the right in the center of the picture, the trunk of which leans towards the top right of the picture. For the first time, Ophey depicted his motif in blazing sunlight, and the impasto application of paint makes the painting more free and intense than in the previous works. Ophey named the painting after the Wittlaerer excursion restaurant of the same name shown in the background .
Until 1907, Ophey developed, largely unaffected by artistic developments outside of Düsseldorf, with those in Niederkassel and Wittlaer, during painting stays in Drevenack an der Lippe , on the Lower Rhine and on the Erft , works that are characterized by their carefree painting experiments with colors , a painting technique "that was called expressive naturalism." "In terms of motif, technology and color in his works, Ophey was the first Düsseldorf painter to free himself from the long-standing model of Dutch landscape painting."
Light painting
A phase of open-air painting began in 1908 , for which the picture Spring Sun from 1908 is considered to be one of the most innovative pictures of 1908 due to its extremely bright colors and pointillist painting style. A light-flooded green-yellow meadow landscape with five willows, whose long shadows are cast by the low morning sun on the lower left edge of the picture, is shown. Ophey dissolved the tree silhouettes with dabbed, impasto brushstrokes, which he placed next to each other on the primed, partly free canvas. In the spring sun , decorative surface forms are combined with a vehemence of the painting style that anticipates his later, expressionist work.
The climax of this artistic phase developed on his first trip to Italy in 1910. A year earlier, during a stay on the Belgian coast, Ophey complained that his “studies are all caps” because they have no light, “man has to be here for a long time to paint it all well. ” The oil painting Positano in der Sonne , which Ophey regarded as one of his most important works - he never sold it, but was often shown at retrospective solo exhibitions at the Flechtheim Gallery - shows the largely unchanged view of the bay of Positano with a view of the terraced fishing village and its church with the green and yellow ceramic dome. Ophey built "the entire color of the picture on white and ocher, brown, red-brown and yellow-green tones lightened with white."
- Works of Ophey
Walter Ophey: Autumn Fantasy, 1912, oil on canvas, 160 × 160 cm
Walter Ophey: Church with the Sun, Bigge , 1919–1920, oil on canvas, 70 × 50 cm
Walter Ophey: Bolshevik , around 1920, oil on canvas, 67.5 × 47 cm
Walter Ophey: Sawmill , etching, 1920–1923, 33.2 × 40.5 cm
Walter Ophey: House and Trees , 1922, chalk, 33 × 43.5 cm
Exhibitions (selection)
- 1905: Sales exhibition of the Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia , Düsseldorf, June
- 1906: German Art Exhibition , Flora , Cologne, May to November.
- 1912: International art exhibition of the Sonderbund Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler zu Cöln , Exhibition Hall of the City of Cologne, Am Aachener Tor, 25 May to 30 September.
- 1919: Das Junge Rheinland , Städtische Kunsthalle, June 22 to July 20.
- 1928: German art , Kunstpalast Ehrenhof , May to October.
- 1930: Rhenish secession. Annual exhibition with a memory exhibition for Walter Ophey , Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, May and June 1930.
- 2012: In Search of Light - The Painter Walter Ophey , Deutsche Bundesbank, Headquarters North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf.
- 2018–2020: Walter Ophey - Show your colors , Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (2018–2019), Museum Kulturspeicher Würzburg (2019–2020)
Works (selection)
- around 1905: At Brands Jupp , oil on canvas, 51 × 50 cm, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf
- 1906: Pollarded willows on the Lower Rhine , oil on canvas, 67.5 × 67.5 cm, private collection, Düsseldorf
- 1906–07: Niederkassel , oil on cardboard laid down on canvas, 38 × 42 cm, private collection
- 1908: Spring Sun , oil on canvas, 68 × 67.5 cm, Ophey estate
- 1910: Coast near Positano , oil on canvas, 70 × 65 cm, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf
- 1910: Garden in Sorrento , oil on canvas, 70.0 cm × 65.5 cm, private property, Düsseldorf
- 1912: Tulip pot , oil on canvas, 50.5 × 40 cm, Galerie Paffrath, Düsseldorf
- around 1913: Burning bush , oil on canvas, 65.8 × 70.5 cm, private ownership, Düsseldorf
- around 1913: Park landscape , oil on canvas, 70 × 70 cm, private property
- around 1914: Young woman in the countryside , oil on paper laid down on cardboard, 46.5 × 34.5 cm, private collection
- 1914: Dying Christ , oil on canvas, exhibited in 1914 Galerie Flechtheim Düsseldorf “Rhenish Expressionists”, Hartwig Garnerus Collection, Munich
- 1916: Self-portrait as a hospital soldier , oil on canvas, Hartwig Garnerus Collection, Munich
literature
- The Freihochschulbund, Düsseldorf (ed.): Walter Ophey life and work. With reproductions based on the artist's works, 800 numbered copies, printing and publisher: Ed. Lintz AG. Düsseldorf, 1930
- Remmert and Barth: Walter Ophey, 1882–1930. Paintings, drawings, prints. Exhibition catalog, 1990
- Stefan Kraus : Walter Ophey 1882–1930. Life and work. With a catalog raisonné of the paintings and prints . Hatje, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7757-0403-5 (also dissertation, University of Cologne 1991)
- Hans Albert Peters (Ed.): Walter Ophey. The complete work. Paintings - watercolors - drawings - prints . Catalog for the exhibitions Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf 1991 and Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen 1992. Wienand, Cologne 1991
- Günther Rehbein: Walter Ophey , Monographs on Rhenish-Westphalian Art of the Present, Volume 9, Verlag Aurel Bongers, Recklinghausen, 1958.
- Gunda Luyken (ed.): Walter Ophey - Show your colors. Catalog , Cologne: Wienand 2018 ISBN 978-3-86832-447-1 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Walter Ophey in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Walter Ophey in the German Digital Library
- Works by Walter Ophey at Zeno.org .
- Page on the life and work of the artist Walter Ophey
- Walter Ophey in exhibitions and galleries
- Christiane Fricke: Walter Ophey "It's bobbing so quietly". Handelsblatt, January 9, 2013. , accessed May 19, 2015
Individual evidence
Unless otherwise noted, the main article is based on the biographical information in: Stefan Kraus: Walter Ophey 1882–1930. Life and work. With a catalog raisonné of the paintings and prints . Hatje, Stuttgart 1993 (also dissertation, University of Cologne 1991)
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 13 f.
- ^ Stefan Kraus: Walter Ophey. 1882-1930. Life and work with a catalog raisonné of paintings and prints . Hatje, Stuttgart 1993, p. 15
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 15 and p. 42; here note 263
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 15
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 15 and p. 16 f.
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 18 f.
- ↑ Bernd Klüser, Katharina Hegewisch (Hrsg.): The art of the exhibition. A documentation of thirty exemplary art exhibitions of this century , p. 40
- ↑ a b Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 24
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 19
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 20
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 22 f. and p. 23
- ^ Portrait of Mrs. Walter Ophey, Bernhardine Bornemann, 1905 , in the Stadtmuseum Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 15 ff, p. 28 f.
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 30 f.
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 41
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 37
- ↑ Dates of life: 1888 - 1947. Also member of the Junge Rheinland
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 39
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 37 and p. 42 f.
- ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Ophey, Walter ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 3, 2015)
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 45 ff. And note 290 on p. 45
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 48
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 49, quoted from: Magdalena M. Moeller: Der Sonderbund. His prerequisites and beginnings in Düsseldorf , Cologne 1984, p. 68
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 49
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 54
- ^ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 56
- ↑ Stefan Kraus, Stuttgart 1993, p. 57
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ophey, Walter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ophey, Walter Hugo (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 25, 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Eupen |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 11, 1930 |
| Place of death | Dusseldorf |