Walter Popp (ceramist)

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Walter Popp (born October 12, 1913 in Bunzlau , Silesia, † August 8, 1977 in Kassel ) was a German ceramist . He founded the Kassel School for Ceramics .

Life

Education and years in the war

Walter Popp trained as a photographer in Bunzlau from 1933 to 1935 . There he met his future wife Veronika Dresler. From 1935 to 1937 Popp completed his studies at the Bavarian State College for Photography in Munich in the master class for creative photography. From 1939 to 1945 he did his military service.

Walter and Veronika Popp in Dießen

From 1948 to 1954 Walter Popp had a ceramic workshop in the pottery town of Dießen on the Ammersee . During this time Popp began self-taught his artistic work on the potter's wheel together with his wife Veronika Popp. Veronika Popp was the daughter of the ceramist Paul Dresler (1879–1950) from Krefeld , whose artistic experience they both continued.

Appointment and teaching in Kassel

The director of the Kassel Werkakademie, Stephan Hirzel , appointed Walter Popp to the Kassel Art Academy in 1954. He became a workshop manager with a license to teach and founded the "Kassel School for Ceramics". From 1954 to 1977 Popp headed the ceramics class at the University of Fine Arts in Kassel. He was the innovative teacher who already showed in the 1950s what great creative potential there is in the cylinders and bowls developed on the traditional potter's wheel. He fascinated his students with his ideas and awakened in them the skills to embark on their own artistic path. Although today he is undisputedly considered one of the most important ceramists and influential teachers of German ceramics after 1945, Popp was denied any awards and professorial appointments throughout his life.

In 1955 he worked as a photographer in the working committee of documenta 1 in Kassel.

plant

introduction

Walter Popp was one of the most important German ceramists and shaped like no other the post-war generation of German ceramists. Walter Popp was one of the pioneers of abstract, free sculptural shapes in German ceramics. With an interdisciplinary approach, he emphasizes that ceramics are not made by ceramics alone and that he was inspired by philosophy , literature , art and above all by music . In the extended technique of serial music by Pierre Boulez et al. a. Walter Popp saw a role model for his striving for objectivity in art.

Workshop in Dießen

In Dießen arose, the "Dreslerschen" family tradition and the Stephan Erdös admired by Popp , high-branded, u. a. copper green and blue glazed earthenware . Jakob Wilhelm Hinder sold the simple utility ceramics.

Kassel School for Ceramics

Vase Ikarus by Walter Popp

In Kassel, Walter Popp turned to work made of stoneware . Under the influence of the East Asian techniques and stylistic devices described by Bernard Leach , he created unique vases , bowls and kums . His initially traditional canon of shapes comprised thick-walled cylindrical, conical and spherical vessels as well as cups and bowls derived from them with powerful edges and unglazed feet. His preferred decorations include overlapping immersion zones that emphasize the vessel volume and very decorative horizontal glaze courses . Walter Popp achieved this by modifying the combination of diving, pouring and skidding known from East Asia . Sometimes narrow unglazed zones placed in a ring around the body of the vessel separate the glazed zones from one another to increase their effectiveness. At the end of the 1950s, Walter Popp began to execute his characteristic single or multi-axis vascular sculptures assembled from stereometric turned parts. In this phase of his work he cited the compositional schemes of Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen and used fugal compositional laws from Johann Sebastian Bachs and Anton von Weberns . In the mid-1960s, Walter Popp primarily used assembly techniques using abstract paintings such as broad brown and black color fields , brush strokes and lines in a pale green or light gray glaze background. They aroused her associations with pictures by Franz Kline and her friend Fritz Winter . The imponderables of the fire of the ceramic material in the furnace hindered the precise implementation of his designs. Then between 1963 and 1967 Popp developed a series of collages with geometric elements made of different colored plastic films. Popp's works composed of geometric elements made of colored foils as well as ceramics and ceramic segments in the succession of constructivism and the work of De Stijl masters find their thematic continuation and structural realization in the ceramic mural in the in the Justus Liebig University of Giessen , the "Giessen wall design".

In 1965, on the mediation of director Stephan Hirzel, his design for the porcelain vase Ikarus is produced in the State Porcelain Manufactory Berlin - KPM Berlin.

Works in museums

Exhibitions

  • 1962 Modern German Ceramics, MKG Hamburg
  • 1969 Deisenroth Gallery, Fulda
  • 1970 German goldsmith's house: ceramics of the present, Hanau
  • 1970 Giessen - Justus Liebig University, mural, dimensions: H: 200 cm, W: 500 cm
  • 1977–78 Foundation Keramion, Frechen
  • 1979 European ceramics since 1950
  • 1986 Hetjens Museum: Dr. Vehring, Düsseldorf
  • 1990: Walter Popp, ceramics and collages, Badisches Landesmuseum , Karlsruhe
  • 2014: StG Kulturhof Flachsgasse, Speyer
  • 2014: "Aspects of Modernity" - Walter Popp and his legendary "Kassel School", Museum for Modern Ceramics, Deidesheim

literature

  • Jakob Wilhelm Hinder: Walter Popp - an important ceramicist and educator of our time , in: Keramische Zeitschrift 17/1965, pp. 161–162.
  • Ulrich Gertz: Walter Popp and his students , Keramos / 1978, January 1978
  • Bettina Broxtermann: The ceramicist Walter Popp (1913–1977) , dissertation, Karlsruhe , University , 1988
  • Bettina Broxtermann: Walter Popp, ceramics and collages , Karlsruhe: Badisches Landesmuseum, exhibition catalog 1990
  • Bettina Broxtermann: Walter Popp. Ceramics and Collages , Ceramic Journal, 1991
  • Ingrid Vetter: Ceramics in Germany - 1955–1990 , Arnoldsche, Stuttgart, 1997, pages, 11, 17 f., 20 f., 29, 40, 44 f., 51, 54-57, 59, 62 f., 65 , 70, 72, 90, 94, 96-101, 102, 105, 107-110, 121 f., 126, 128, 134 f., 137 f., 159, 194 ff., 217, 219, 248-253 , ISBN 3-925369-77-5
  • Ingrid Vetter: Modern Ceramics of the 20th Century , Arnoldsche, Stuttgart, 2007, pages 12, 16, 19-23, 25-26, 55, 62, 65, 73, 103, 124-125, 136, 142, 145, 149 , 154, 163.164, 168, 170, 188, 190, 193-197, 198, 207, 225, 227-229, 231-232, 237, 245; Year 2007 ISBN 978-3-89790-275-6
  • Paul Schmaling: Artist Lexicon Hessen-Kassel 1777–2000. With the painters' colonies Willinghausen and Kleinsassen. Jenior, Kassel 2001, ISBN 3-934377-96-3
  • Ingrid Vetter: Walter Popp - Ceramics , Museum for Modern Ceramics Deidesheim eV, 2013
  • Ingrid Vetter: Walter Popp and his legendary KASSELER SCHULE , Museum for Modern Ceramics Deidesheim e. V., 2014 ISBN 978-3-00-046094-4
  • Tim D. Gronert: Porcelain from KPM - Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin - 1918–1988 - History, artists and works , Volume III, artist biography, pages 290-292, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-422- 97147-9 .

Web links

Commons : Walter Popp (Ceramist)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jakob Wilhelm Hinder: Walter Popp - an important ceramist and educator of our time, in: Keramische Zeitschrift 17/1965, pp. 161–162.
  2. ^ Ingrid Vetter: Walter Popp - Ceramics , Museum for Modern Ceramics Deidesheim eV, page 7, 2013
  3. ↑ Tim D. Gronert: Porcelain from KPM - Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin - 1918–1988 - History, Artists and Works , Volume III, page 291
personal data
SURNAME Popp, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ceramist
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Bunzlau , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1977
Place of death kassel