Werner Drewes

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Werner Drewes (born July 27, 1899 in Canig (today Kaniów / Poland) in Niederlausitz ; † June 21, 1985 in Reston (Virginia) ) was a German-American painter and printmaker .

Since his death in 1985, Werner Drewes has received increasing recognition from collectors and curators for his important role and its impact on 20th century American art. As a student, he studied with Lyonel Feininger and László Moholy-Nagy at the Weimar Bauhaus during the 1920s . He was one of the first artists to introduce the groundbreaking concepts of the Bauhaus School in the United States through his painting, printmaking, and teaching.

life and work

Werner Drewes was born as the son of the Lutheran pastor, Georg Drewes, in Canig in Lower Lusatia in 1899. During the First World War , Drewes served on the Western Front as a soldier for two years . In 1919 he enrolled at the Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg , studying architecture and design. In 1920 he began studying architecture at the Technical University in Stuttgart. A year later he switched to the arts and crafts school in Stuttgart. In 1921 he went to the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he studied with Paul Klee , Johannes Itten and Georg Muche . From 1923 to 1927 he traveled extensively throughout Europe, North America and Asia. After returning to Germany in 1927, he returned to the Bauhaus at his new location in Dessau , where he enrolled in the classes of László Moholy-Nagy (graphics) and Wassily Kandinsky (painting).

When the political pressure on the Bauhaus artists became increasingly unbearable in 1930 (the National Socialists closed the Bauhaus in 1933), especially for those artists who had devoted themselves to abstract art, Drewes left Germany. He emigrated with his wife and their two sons to New York City , where the third son was born in 1931. Despite the Great Depression, Drewes thrived in his new environment. He taught printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum , lectured in Stanley William Hayter's studio 17, and was a teacher of painting, drawing, and printmaking at Columbia University . In 1937 he was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists Group, the first official organization in the United States devoted to the creation of non-representational art. The group included Ad Reinhardt , Sidney Geist and Ibram Lassaw , among others .

Drewes, whose reputation had grown further, accepted the professorship in design at Washington University in St. Louis in 1946 . This position granted him more financial stability and as a result he was able to concentrate more on his art. During this time he met Max Beckmann , who also taught at the university and with whom he became friends.

Drewes retired in 1965 and moved to Reston, Virginia, where he remained artistically active until his death in 1985. Drewes enjoyed great recognition for his work in these later years. A major retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1984 was entirely devoted to his prints.

Selected exhibitions

  • 1961: Cleveland Museum of Art
  • 1962: Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, Museum of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
  • 1966: Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania
  • 1968: Trenton State College
  • 1969: National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington
  • 1979: Washington University, St. Louis
  • 1983: Associated American Artists, New York
  • 1984: Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington (large retrospective)
  • 2000: Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles
  • 2006: Platt Fine Art, Chicago

Selected collections

literature

  • Literature by and about Werner Drewes in the catalog of the German National Library
  • Dreyfuss, Caril (ed.). Werner Drewes: woodcuts [exhibition catalog]. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969.
  • Geierhaas, Franz & Brigitte Hellgoth. The Creative Act. International Print Society, 1984.
  • Norelli, Martina. Werner Drewes: Sixty Five Years of Printmaking, Washington: National Museum of American Art, 1984.
  • Rose, Ingrid. Werner Drewes: A Catalog Raisonné of his Prints, Munich-New York: Verlag Kunstgalerie Esslingen, 1984.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.americanabstractartists.org
personal data
SURNAME Drewes, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American painter and printmaker
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Canig
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1985
Place of death Reston (Virginia)