Wilhelm Blanke

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Wilhelm Blanke in his studio in Steglitz around 1918

Wilhelm Blanke (born March 11, 1873 in Unruhstadt , Province of Posen , † April 16, 1936 in Schwiebus ) was a German painter and lithographer .

life and work

Wilhelm Blanke was born as the sixth child of the married couple Johanna Karoline (née Neumann) and Ernst Johann Blanke. After his school days he was trained as a decorative painter by his oldest brother Ernst . After completing his apprenticeship in 1890, he went to Berlin to initially work in his profession. From 1892 to 1894 he undertook a two-year study tour through Europe's art metropolises as far as Italy. He then settled in Steglitz near Berlin and tried to gain recognition as a painter autodidactically.

In March 1901 he married Anna Graf, the eldest daughter of the painter and court photographer Heinrich Graf , and in December 1901 their son Heinz ( Henry ) was born.

At the beginning of his career, Wilhelm Blanke was still caught up in the academic style of painting, which he had mastered without an academy training, but he began early to deal with the different conceptions of painting and found his ideal means of expression in the impressionistically influenced painting style.

Willhelm Blanke was a very versatile painter. In the forty years that he has lived in Berlin-Steglitz, he has created an extensive oeuvre. He found many of his motifs in nature. The austere landscapes and colorful flower pieces, but also the depiction of religious themes or the interiors - all paintings convey great talent and skill and show his quality as a great colourist.

He was close friends with well-known Berlin painters, especially with the supporters of moderate Berlin Impressionism; Carl Kayser-Eichberg should be mentioned here as a representative. Similarities in the work of Wilhelm Blanke with the style of the Bracht School are therefore not accidental. There are also many similarities with his brother-in-law, the painter Gerhard Graf .

Highly honored on his 60th birthday in 1933, Wilhelm Blanke left Berlin-Steglitz soon afterwards in order to escape the political upheavals and changes in the capital's artistic life in his birthplace Unruhstadt. Wilhelm Blanke died on April 16, 1936 after a brief illness in the hospital in the district town of Schwiebus. In Unruhstadt he was carried to the grave with great sympathy by the painter friends who had traveled there.

Exhibitions and Importance

As a member of the Association of Berlin Artists , which he joined in 1898, Wilhelm Blanke participated in the annual exhibitions of the Great Berlin Art Exhibition from around 1902 to 1936 , and he also sent his works to other important exhibitions, not only in Berlin. Solo exhibitions have been handed down in the Berlin Artists 'Guild in 1930 and in the Scherlhaus Berlin in 1931. On his sixtieth birthday in 1933, the Berlin Artists' Association honored him in a large anniversary exhibition together with his painter friends Carl Kayser-Eichberg, Fritz Geyer and Julius Klein von Diepold.

Wilhelm Blanke's works are regularly offered in the international art trade, but the German public, like many other artists of his time, is hardly known today.

In 2008 the city administration of Wilhelm Blanke's birthplace, today's Polish Kargowa , gave the town's cultural center the name "Wilhelm Blanke" in memory of the city's German son. Since that day, a marble plaque with the artist's data has not only adorned the house of culture, but also the house where he was born.

The following year, a large solo exhibition with 56 works by Wilhelm Blanke was opened in Kargowa with the participation of high-ranking Polish guests and visitors from Germany.

In 2012, the Heimatverein Steglitz and the Wilhelm Blanke Archive presented the artist to the public in a representative selection of his works.

archive

The Wilhelm Blanke Archive in Berlin wants to keep the painter's memory alive, maintain and complete his legacy, and research and document his work. A catalog of works is continuously kept for this purpose. Exhibitions, lectures, information on the Internet and other suitable measures are intended to awaken and increase public knowledge of the painter.

literature

  • Master of color . In: European contemporary art . Booklet VII, 151, p. 896 and booklet IV, 153, p. 909, as well as booklet XI, 155, p. 916, each with a full-page colored illustration. E. A Seemann publisher, Leipzig, 1916.
  • Bruno Schrader: Wilhelm Blanke . In: Westermannsmonthshefte . Volume 127 / I, issue 737, pp. 49–57, with 12 colored illustrations. Publisher George Westermann, Braunschweig, 1919.
  • Grenzmark - Grenzwall . In: Die Gartenlaube, illustrated weekly newspaper . Issue no. 21, article on the paintings by Wilhelm Blanke with 11 colored illustrations. Verlag August Scherl, Berlin, 1929.
  • Wilhelm Blanke . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 1 : Aa – Antonio de Miraguel . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1907, p. 228 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Stefan Petriuk: Unruhstadt and Karge - Unrugowa i Kargowa, a city that emerged in the age of tolerance in the field of tension between Poles and Germans (bilingual). Integra Plus Publishing House, PL-60-972 Poznań 1, 2005, ISBN 83-87005-30-4 .
  • Regine Zimmerinkat: In the footsteps of the Steglitz painter Wilhelm Blanke (1873–1936). In: Steglitz home. Bulletin of the Heimatverein Steglitz eV, Volume 56, Issue No. 2, 2011, pp. 7–12.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Blanke, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and lithographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Clock Town , Poznan Province
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1936
Place of death Schwiebus