Walter Werneburg

Walter Werneburg (born June 2, 1922 in Oppershausen , Thuringia , † April 16, 1999 in Erfurt ) was a German painter. He was known for his particularly vivid prints and the deep symbolism in his pictures.

family

His son Joachim Werneburg is a writer (poetry and short prose) and his son Ralf Werneburg is a paleontologist.

Life

From 1936 to 1939 he trained as a painter in Mühlhausen / Thuringia . Walter Werneburg studied from 1939 to 1941 at the Erfurt School of Applied Arts and from 1949 to 1951 at the State School for Applied Arts in Erfurt, the successor to the School of Applied Arts. From 1951 to 1959 he worked as an art teacher and from 1959 to 1981 as a teacher at the Erfurt University of Education in the field of art education. From 1964 to 1965 he completed an external course at the University of Leipzig .

Walter Werneburg's early work was about the direct representation of nature. Otto Knöpfer was his teacher, Otto Paetz is one of the initiators. Above all, he convinced with his landscape watercolors. At the Pedagogical University, Werneburg led among other things the training of the students in the gravure printing process, which had a productive effect on his own artistic work. He experimented with this technique in a variety of ways, used the medium of light-dark contrast, exaggerated linearity and played with the possibilities of color printing.

An artistic collaboration between Walter Werneburg and his son Joachim Werneburg developed in 1979. The result was an extensive graphic and poetic work that, generally speaking, deals with the position of man in the cosmos, his relationship to stones, plants and the animal world. In other cycles, the early history of Central Europe was thematized on the basis of archaeological material. By 1995 Walter Werneburg had created thirty-one print cycles. The joint work was published in full in 2010 in the volume “Die Rabenfibel”. The book "Word and Sweeping Line" (1997/2010) reports on the collaboration between the two.

In addition to several own exhibitions in Ostrava (Czech Republic), Banská Bystrica (Slovakia), Kołobrzeg ( Poland ), Torgelow , Maxhütte / Unterwellenborn , Sömmerda, Eisenach, Mühlhausen , Schleusingen , Oppershausen and Erfurt, he also took part in the VII GDR Art Exhibition in Dresden part.

Graphic cycles (selection)

• Oppershauser Sheets I + II (1979)
• Fabled Erfurt (1980)
• Words. Lutheran (1982)
• Russian Spring (1984)
• Hainich (1984/85)
• Kupferberg zu Ilmenau (1985)
• Raven Primer (1986)
• Slavonic Dances (1987)
• The Ride of the Animals (1990)
• The snake-footed goddess (1991)
• Externsteine ​​(1993)
• The Holy Lake (1994)
• Mallorca (1995)

Publications

• Walter Werneburg. My way to school. A coloring book for children aged 6-8 . Bild und Heimat Verlag, Reichenbach (Vogtland) 1963; New edition 2017 at Scidinge Hall Verlag Tübingen
• Joachim Werneburg and Walter Werneburg. The Rabelfibel . Scidinge Hall Verlag, Zurich 2010

Publications with graphic cycles (selection)

• Leaves from the Baumbachhaus , published by Walter Werner , Staatliche Museen Meiningen 1985 (contains words. Lutheran )
• Joachim Werneburg. The snake-footed goddess , Edition Arnshaugk, Munich 2009 (contains graphic cycle of the same name)
• Joachim Werneburg. The copper mine. Fragments from 1977 to 1989 , Scidinge Hall, Zurich 2011 (contains Kupferberg zu Ilmenau )
• Joachim Werneburg. Thuringian Sea , Scidinge Hall, Zurich 2012 (contains Die Rabenfibel )
• Joachim Werneburg. Notes on the rock face. From the years 1990 to 1995 , Scidinge Hall, Zurich 2016 (contains Die Externsteine )
• Joachim Werneburg. Die Reise nach Südost , Scidinge Hall, Tübingen 2017 (contains graphic cycle of the same name)

Literature (selection)

• Gerhard Bondzin (Ed.): VII. Art Exhibition of the GDR . Association of Visual Artists of the GDR, Dresden 1972
• Edwin Kratschmer : Erfurt Angerkonzert - Notes on the exhibition in the Small Gallery of the Kulturpalast VEB Maxhütte Unterwellenborn, January to March 1982, Unterwellenborn 1982
• Helga Mäder: Kupferberg zu Ilmenau. A modern fairy tale? ERNA W., Erfurt, 1994
• Rudolf Kober : Speech for the opening of Walter Werneburg's exhibition on the occasion of his 75th birthday in the Erfurt town hall on June 3, 1997
• Jürgen Winter: Between the forest and the world: The art space Thuringia in the 20th century . Publishing house FW Cordier, Heiligenstadt 2010
• Joachim Werneburg: Word and curved line - notes on the artistic collaboration with Walter Werneburg . Scidinge Hall Verlag, Zurich 2010
• Helmut Roewer : Books by father and son . In: Das Lindenblatt. Annual journal for beautiful literature 2014

Web links

• life and work