Walter Womacka
Walter Womacka (born December 22, 1925 in Horní Jiřetín , Czechoslovakia , † September 18, 2010 in Berlin ) was a German painter , graphic artist and designer of numerous architecture-related works. For twenty years he was rector of the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art .
Life
Womacka was born the son of a gardener. After training as a decorative painter from 1940 to 1943 at the State School for Ceramics in Teplitz-Schönau , Womacka had to do military service until 1945, during which he was wounded. After the end of the war he first worked as a farm worker and from 1946 he attended the master school for creative craft in Braunschweig with Bruno Müller-Linow . Because his family had moved to Thuringia , he moved to the University of Architecture and Fine Arts in Weimar in 1949, where he studied with Hans Hofmann-Lederer , Hermann Kirchberger and Otto Herbig . After the university's realignment towards architecture , he continued his studies from 1951 to 1952 at the Dresden University of Fine Arts, among others with Fritz Dähn and Rudolf Bergander .
In 1953 Walter Womacka moved to the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art , where he initially worked as an assistant and from 1963 as head of the painting department. Georg Baselitz was one of his most famous students today . In 1965 he was appointed professor . In 1968 he replaced Fritz Dähn as rector of the university and remained so until 1988. From 1959 to 1988 he was vice-president of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR . He was a member of the SED and was significantly promoted by state and party leader Walter Ulbricht . In 1968 Womacka became a full member of the GDR Academy of Arts . Due to his numerous architecture-related works in public space, the presence of his works in school books and in the form of reproductions, Walter Womacka is still one of the most famous painters in the GDR. From 1969 to 1971 Womacka was a member of the district leadership of the SED in East Berlin.
Womacka was considered a state artist because of his system-compliant work . In 1968, in a newspaper article, he expressly welcomed the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia and thus the suppression of the Prague Spring . During his principal activity at the Art Academy Weissensee least 40 students were political reasons expelled . Shortly before his death, he justified the Berlin Wall in his autobiography with the words: This wall was ugly, but necessary. And in her own way she helped to ensure that there was peace.
Create
He was one of the most important representatives of socialist realism in the GDR. In addition to panel paintings , graphics and watercolors , he also designed glass windows in the 1950s, for example in the building of the former State Council and in the Humboldt University in Berlin , as well as mosaics and enamel work . In 1968 he was in charge of the artistic design of the new buildings on Alexanderplatz . There he designed the 7 × 125 m frieze Our Life at the Teacher's House (1964), the Fountain of Friendship between Nations (1970) and the copper relief at the House of Traveling Man and Space (1971).
For the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR (1967) he created three large-format murals that were destroyed when the building was demolished in 1995/96. The same threatened his mural The Man, the Measure of All Things (1968) at the Ministry of Building. The federal government, as the owner, wanted to tear down the mural with the building. At the end of a public discussion, the Berlin-Mitte housing association took over the mural in 2010, restored it and repositioned it in another location in October 2013.
Womacka's panel painting When Communists Dream hung in the main foyer of the Palace of the Republic , today it is kept in the depot of the German Historical Museum . Commissioned portraits were created by Walter Ulbricht, the physician Moritz Mebel and the mayors of Berlin Arthur Werner , Friedrich Ebert and Herbert Fechner , among others . In 1987 Womacka portrayed the Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Assad , who gave him a vacation trip to his daughter in Cyprus as a thank you . Since the Third German Art Exhibition in 1953, works by Walter Womacka have been on view at the GDR art exhibition in Dresden.
After 1990, in addition to still life and landscape painting, Womacka dealt with topics of today's ( throwaway ) society and the allegedly freedom-bringing role of the USA. He designed the logo for the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity , which was founded in 1991 and was temporarily monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution . In 2007, the Walter Womacka Circle of Friends was founded, which is headed by a former manager of the Culture Department of the Central Committee of the SED .
Walter Womacka died on September 18, 2010 in Berlin and was buried on October 7, 2010 in Berlin's central cemetery in Friedrichsfelde .
Womacka left no children of her own. Daughter Uta, whose father died in World War II , brought his wife Hanni into the marriage. The couple lived in Berlin-Mitte and in Loddin on Usedom .
Works (selection)
painting
- On the beach . 1962, oil, best-selling painting reproduction in the GDR, published as a postage stamp, as well as:
- When communists dream . 1976, Palace of the Republic
- Erika Steinführer. Oil on canvas, 1981 for the trade union umbrella organization FDGB (today Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen )
Construction-related work
- 1954/55, Eisenhüttenstadt , leaded glass window in the documentation center of everyday culture in the GDR (former day nursery)
- 1958, Eisenhüttenstadt, natural stone mosaic on a complete hall wall in the town hall: Our new life
- 1959, Bad Elster , lead glass window in the pump room of the Marienquelle
- 1960/61, Oranienburg , three leaded glass windows in the entrance hall of the museum of the Sachsenhausen National Memorial
- 1962, Berlin-Mitte , three leaded glass windows in the stairwell of the main building of the Humboldt University
- 1963/64, Berlin-Mitte, glass window in the building of the former State Council of the GDR
- 1964, Berlin-Mitte, natural stone mosaic on the teacher's house
- 1965, Eisenhüttenstadt , Mosaic on department store magnet production in Peace
- 1966/67, Bern , ceramic wall in the entrance hall of the Central Office for International Rail Traffic (OCTI)
- 1968, Berlin-Mitte, mural enamel on copper Man, the measure of all things ; the former Ministry of Construction of the GDR, Broad Street , now dismantled and a renovated block at the since autumn 2013 Friedrichsgracht attached
- 1968/70, Berlin-Mitte, fountain of friendship between nations on Alexanderplatz
- 1970, Magdeburg, mural, enamel on copper, sun and doves on Karl-Marx-Straße - formerly "Marietta-Block" (dismantled in 2001 and now in private ownership)
- 1973 Oberhof , wall design Die Vier Jahreszeiten enamel on copper at the Hotel Rennsteig (the hotel was demolished in 2001 - picture saved and since then owned by a regional company in Thuringia)
Where to find
Works by Walter Womacka are owned by the Nationalgalerie (Berlin) , the Peter Ludwig Collection , the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation , the Beeskow Art Archive , the Museum Junge Kunst , Frankfurt (Oder) , the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, and many others private collector.
Awards
- 1957: Art Prize of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship 2. Recognition Prize for the painting Resting at the Harvest
- 1959: GDR Art Prize for the painting Resting at the Harvest
- 1960: Art Prize of the FDGB for the painting Young Cooperative Farmer
- 1962: National Prize of the GDR III. class
- 1963: Johannes R. Becher Medal
- 1965: Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
- 1966: Erich Weinert Medal
- 1968: National Prize of the GDR 2nd class for his artistic work
- 1975: Art Prize of the FDGB
- 1976: Labor banner in gold
- 1982: Hans Grundig Medal
- 1985: National Prize of the GDR, 1st class
- 2009: “Human Rights Prize” of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity e. V.
Filmography
- 1958: A picture made of 100,000 stones (documentation of the work on the mosaic in the town hall of Eisenhüttenstadt , DEFA ')
- 1984: A feast for the eyes (documentary about work, television of the GDR )
- 2003: Show your colors - the painter Walter Womacka (A film by Sabine Skupin, MDR )
literature
General
- Gerhard Pommeranz-Liedtke: Painter and Work - Womacka . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1970.
- Wolfgang Hütt : Walter Womacka . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1980.
- Magistrate of Berlin (ed.): Walter Womacka exhibition, painting / graphics . 1982.
- Walter Womacka on his 60th birthday , National Museums in Berlin, capital of the GDR, Henschel Verlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, Berlin 1985.
- Autobiography: Show your colors. Memories , Das Neue Berlin , Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-360-01257-9
- Anke Scharnhorst, Ingrid Kirschey-Feix : Womacka, Walter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
- A rainbow over the television tower. In: Berliner Zeitung , December 22, 2005.
- Belly band for utopia. In: Berliner Zeitung , January 2, 2007.
- More threat than hope. In: Neues Deutschland , December 10, 2009.
- Luise Helas: Walter Womacka. His contribution to architecture-related art in the GDR. In: Luise Helas, Wilma Rambow, Felix Rössl: Artful surfaces of socialism: murals and concrete blocks = research on the architectural heritage of the GDR, Vol. 3. Bauhaus-Universitätsverlag, Weimar 2014, pp. 19-101, ISBN 978-3-95773- 171-5 .
Contributions to the death of Walter Womacka
- Walter Womacka, the state artist. In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 19, 2010.
- Workers and peasants. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 19, 2010.
- You can't do that with depression. In: Berliner Zeitung , September 20, 2010.
- Died: Walter Womacka . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 2010 ( online ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Walter Womacka in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erika Rödiger-Diruf (Ed.): Painting is dead, long live painting: 150 years of the Karlsruhe Art Academy. Lindemanns Bibliothek, 2004, ISBN 3-88190-364-X , p. 75.
- ↑ Monika Zimmermann: What is actually doing-- ?: 100 GDR celebrities today. Ch. Links Verlag, 1994, ISBN 3-86153-064-3 , p. 295 ff.
- ↑ Walter Womacka: My full agreement. In: New Germany . August 27, 1968.
- ↑ Bernd Eisenfeld : Hope, Resistance, Resignation. on: deutschland.info , p. 804.
- ↑ Hannelore Offner, Klaus Schroeder: Restricted - excluded. Akademie-Verlag, 2000, p. 640.
- ↑ W. Womacka: Color Confess. Memories . Berlin 2004, p. 262
- ^ Walter Womacka: Bekennennen , Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 2nd edition, ISBN 3-360-01257-7 , p. 239 ff.
- ↑ Axel Hecht: Comrade artist: With his cheerful, colorful agitation pictures, Walter Womacka became the GDR's first state artist. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Art - the art magazine . Issue 12/2008, p. 74 ff.
- ^ Report of the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the structures of the former MfS, 2007 ( Memento from April 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 284 kB)
- ^ Dietmar Pühler: Excitement on Usedom about GDR art. In: Usedom Kurier. October 19, 2011.
- ↑ Walter Womacka: Show your colors . 2nd Edition. Verlag Das Neue Berlin, ISBN 3-360-01257-7 , p. 82
- ↑ When communists dream. Website of the German Historical Museum
- ↑ Website of the Documentation Center, with text to the glass window, entitled The life of a child carries , accessed on 23 January 2018th
- ↑ Jeanette Bederke: Iron Hut City, of all places , In: Berliner Zeitung , February 19, 2018, p. 17 (illustration)
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Womacka, Walter |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and graphic artist |
DATE OF BIRTH | December 22, 1925 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Horní Jiřetín , Czechoslovakia |
DATE OF DEATH | September 18, 2010 |
Place of death | Berlin |