Walter Zimmermann (painter)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Zimmermann (born March 8, 1920 in Elberfeld , † April 2, 2002 in Möhrendorf ) was a German painter , graphic artist and art teacher .

Life

Walter Zimmermann was born on March 8, 1920 as the third of ten children in Elberfeld (part of what is now Wuppertal ). After secondary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a commercial graphic artist. 1940 followed the obligation to the Reichsarbeitsdienst and then the draft for military service. It was used first in France, then in Russia and finally in Italy. He married during a leave from the front in January 1943. Zimmermann was taken prisoner by the Americans in 1945, but initially ended up in the Dachau war crimes camp due to a mix-up of names . He was released in 1946. After the death of his wife in February 1947, he went to the West to continue his education.

Walter Zimmermann, "February", 1961, oil on canvas

In 1948 he was accepted by Karl Caspar in his art class in Brannenburg and in 1949 married his fellow student Erika Pfeifer. The common son was born. In 1952, Zimmermann became a master student under Franz Nagel . The attention was now drawn to him: in 1953 he received a grant from the Prinzregent Luitpold Foundation and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus bought his first watercolor from him.

When the art academic phase ended in 1955, the family moved to Erlangen . In the following year Walter Zimmermann was accepted into the Ring of Bergischer Künstler (rbk). He found new impulses through several artist trips to southern France and Italy: A phase of rich artistic activity began. The year 1957 was decisive for him, in which he developed into purely abstract painting in intensive studio work . Based on this, he confronted the city of Erlangen with modern art in 1959 together with artist colleagues Gerhard Baumgärtel , Oskar Koller , Herbert Martius and Helmut Lederer . He advanced to one of the decisive impulses of the cultural reconsideration and artistic reorientation in the Middle Franconian university town.

In 1960 he began his art education work at the Marie-Therese-Gymnasium in Erlangen. What was initially intended as a sideline job became a full-time job in 1966 after he had survived a severe health crisis as a late consequence of his post-war situation. Until his retirement in 1981, the educational work dominated, in which he defined new criteria for assessing artistic work on the occasion of the leadership of the art performance course.

Only then did a new creative phase begin: he and his wife and artist colleague Erika Zimmermann undertook numerous artist trips to other European countries, alternating with work in the studio at home. The results were shown not only in large exhibitions, but also in annual workshop presentations in-house, for which Herbert Hechtel composed and performed sound objects in 1986 ( "for Walter Zimmermann based on his pictures" ). In 1989 Walter Zimmermann was awarded the City of Erlangen's Culture Prize. He died on April 2, 2002 after a brief illness.

Artistic orientation

Color is the essential substance and means of Walter Zimmermann's artistic activity: What is meant is both its intrinsic value and the relationship between colors, and ultimately the interaction between color and space. The aim is to create a special kind of relationship with the viewer on this basis, ultimately addressing them in terms of color. In order to implement this as uncompromisingly as possible, Zimmermann freed himself step by step from the conventions of representational painting. Colors were not supposed to represent, but were organized as color according to a graphic scale. For Zimmermann, this also included putting the brush aside as the traditional tool of painting and, in addition to the canvas, dealing with alternative places of color (e.g. concrete walls).

In particular, the possibilities of the screen printing process rediscovered for artistic activity in the early 1960s and the related discipline of color composition were explored as radically as possible. From 1969 onwards, his pictures were preferably created with a squeegee . The titles of the respective works were usually formulated in the discussion of the Zimmermann couple when they were finished. Walter Zimmermann worked on trips as a draftsman or watercolorist as well as in the studio with the possibilities of oil painting or hand printing. His works can be found in municipal collections in Munich, Jena, Schweinfurt and Erlangen, for example, and in the vdHeydt Museum in Wuppertal. He left behind an oeuvre that includes various painting techniques, printing techniques, watercolors, drawings, several picture walls and a glass window.

Walter Zimmermann's last artistic expression, "Untitled", 2002, felt pen on paper

Art history classification

Walter Zimmermann's artistic training and his work as a radically modern painter in Erlangen in Central Franconia is determined by the post-war situation in the Federal Republic of Germany. As a pupil of Karl Caspar , he represented an attitude of reconnecting with the spirit of modernity after the National Socialist barbarism. In the university town of Erlangen, which is looking for intellectuality and cultural reconsideration, the freedom option of his artistic work is combined with the longing to face the cultural impoverishment of the economic boom. Zimmermann's approach is much more puristic than his fellow artists and thus has a polarizing effect. Using the possibilities of abstraction not only to spark an effect, but also to generate meaning, leads to the question of how to interpret the art of Walter Zimmermann. What I mean and what I mean cannot, as usual, be related to an objective level, but rather leads to a speculative level of meaning of colors and shapes. Zimmermann's pictures can be seen as devotion to them and in this dimension as a special way of laying down personal insights, arguments and statements. Regardless of the question of interpretation, there remains a painting that is uncompromisingly dedicated to color:

“ Walter Zimmermann's independent achievement consists in the fact that he has gained a new immediacy in painting from constructive abstraction. The monumental image structure is not eliminated, but redefined as a moving order. Color is no longer dematerialized, but is allowed to develop its material character. It is no longer reduced to its symbolic meaning, but becomes a psychic event, not a means of design, but the shape of the picture itself: 'Adventure Color'. "

- Kurt Jauslin

Awards

Solo and group exhibitions (selection)

  • 1952 Munich, Lenbach House : master class at the academy
  • 1952 Tivoli
  • 1955 Collegium-Alexandrinum, Erlangen
  • 1956 Universahaus , Nuremberg
  • 1959 Orangery , Erlangen
  • 1962 Orangery , Erlangen Siemens
  • 1964 Orangery , Erlangen
  • 1965 City Museum Erlangen
  • 1967 Merkur department store, Erlangen
  • 1968 Orangery , Erlangen
  • from 1985 annual workshop exhibition
  • 1988 Orangery , Erlangen
  • 1989 Mochental Castle , exhibition by the Caspar students
  • 1990 Colegio Alemán de Valencia and Erlangen City Hall
  • 1993 Stutterheim Palace, Erlangen
  • 1994 Mladá Fronta Gallery, Budweis
  • 1999 From Loewenichsches Palais, Erlangen
  • 2005 Posthumously, Kunstmuseum Erlangen eV in the Von Loewenichschen Palais, Erlangen

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Hermann Greissinger: Dialogue of Color or “My Heaven and My Hell”. In: Walter Zimmermann catalog of works 1st ed. By Erika Zimmermann. Möhrendorf undated, pp. 89-92.
  • Manfred H. Grieb (Hrsg.): Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon. Visual artists, artisans, scholars, collectors, cultural workers and patrons from the 12th to the middle of the 20th century. Volume 1-4. De Gruyter Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-11763-3 .
  • Kurt Jauslin: Adventure Color - Adventure Abstraction. An attempt on the pictorial worlds of Walter Zimmermann. In: Walter Zimmermann catalog of works, 2nd ed. By Erika Zimmermann. Möhrendorf undated, pp. 1-3.
  • Walter Zimmermann catalog of works. 1 + 2, edited by Erika Zimmermann. Möhrendorf no year

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Jauslin: Adventure Color - Adventure Abstraction. An attempt on the pictorial worlds of Walter Zimmermann. In: Catalog of works. 2, p. 3.
personal data
SURNAME Zimmermann, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 2002
Place of death Möhrendorf