Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli

Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli (born March 14, 1879 in Hamburg ; † March 18, 1960 there ) was a north German painter.

He studied at the Kassel Art Academy until 1905 (as a student of Hermann Joseph Knackfuß and Louis Kolitz ). His extensive oeuvre in oil, in which bright primary colors predominate (he was locally known as the “painter in blue”), and his prints are mostly dedicated to the people around him and their working life and environment.

Life

The son of a former seaman who was unable to walk due to an accident and who ran a small restaurant in St. Pauli, spent a large part of his youth with an uncle in Howacht on the Baltic Sea, where he owned a small farm and traded fish. After completing elementary and trade school in Hamburg, Wilhelm Frahm was given the opportunity to attend the Kassel Art Academy in 1899, where he became a master student of Hermann Knackfuß after the death of Prof. Neumann in 1902 . He received early recognition in 1904 with the painting Die Schneiderwerkstatt , which was published several times a. a. in Hamburg and Giessen. The critic G. Pr. Is quoted as follows about this phase of his life: “Wilhelm Frahm, who had moved into the Kassel Academy against the will of his father, who wanted nothing to do with such a fruitless thing as painting, was a pupil of Knackfuss and Kolitz . He left the institute in 1905 after completing his studies to take a trip to the Rhön . Since 1908 he stayed in Hamburg again, which from then on he left only for study trips to North Schleswig , East Holstein and Hesse . "

During the first few years after his return to Hamburg , moving into a studio in the former Elbhalle and his marriage to Ada Barkentin from Hadersleben, things seem quiet around Wilhelm Frahm at first. It was not until 1912 that he was again involved in an exhibition ( Hamburg in the fine arts at Commeter); “But the years of silence weren't years of standstill or rest for him. He just wanted to gather his strength in silence first, in order to free himself from the dark tones in which his earlier painting was caught up, in order to be able to come to the public with works of a completely new kind [...]. The old Frahm from the Elbhalle died and the new Frahm, who is now enthroned high up in the Semperhaus above all earthly things [...], is developing. "

By 1919 at the latest, “the new Frahm” appears clearly with new means of expression (emphasis on the picture diagonals; compositions of primary colors, almost always using a bright blue; various close references to Worpswede artists , especially Paula Modersohn-Becker ). At various exhibitions in Gießen and Hamburg from 1919-25 , Frahm u. a. Works highlighted by contemporary critics such as homestead on the west coast of Tondern , In Nebel und Regen , Der Schornsteinfeger , View over the muddy canal , Homecoming and Netzflicker as well as (in print) scenes from Hamburg's old town. But business does not seem to be going well. Although Frahm has been a non-permanent teacher at the Staatliche Gewerbeschule II in Hamburg since July 1919, he and his wife still have to help him and his wife in 1922 with advertising drafts. It was to get worse: In 1933 Frahm-Pauli “lost all of his fortune due to the infidelity of his banker (...) Little is known about the years from 1933 to 1945. Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli was a lodge member and as such was under surveillance by the Gestapo ”. After 1945 Frahm-Pauli ran a barracks studio on the Klaus-Groth-Str. 74 in Hamburg. He remained active in painting until the end of his life. Several of his works from the post-war period are characterized by a much more subdued color palette than in the past. His last oil painting is a boat pushed up the Baltic Sea beach by two fishermen.

The appreciation of his extensive painterly and graphic oeuvre must be reserved for future work. It remains to be seen whether Frahm-Pauli's depictions are as reminiscent of the great French realists of the 19th century as claimed, but it is clear that he remained true to his painting style throughout his life after "the new Frahm" changed over the years had "found" the First World War. In particular, his relationship with Worpswede remains to be examined, whose artist colony he has demonstrably visited several times. His friendship with Hans Müller-Brauel (1867–1940) from Zeven, to whom Ludwig Roselius (1874–1943), the founder of the Bremen coffee empire, had entrusted his archaeological collection in 1930 in the “Haus Atlantis ”(as well as the “ Paula-Becker-Modersohn-Haus ”in Bremer Böttcherstrasse, designed by Bernhard Hoettger in 1925-27 ), could be made accessible to the public (cf. Karl Veit Riedel , Worpswede in photos and documents (Fischerhude: Galerie -Verlag, 1988), pp. 44f.). Via Müller-Brauel, whose portrait Frahm-Pauli captured in oil, our painter may have found the works exhibited in the “Paula-Becker-Modersohn-Haus”. It is no coincidence that some of the depictions of children in oil in particular are strongly based on Paula Modersohn-Becker's motifs , including the Worpswede farmer's child from 1905, who was in Bremen from 1913–1937 and has been in Bremen again since 1945 .

Works in public collections

The Hamburger Kunsthalle owns four works by Frahm-Pauli (including the oil Moorhütte near Worpswede ), a legacy of the artist on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1949. Another oil painting ( portrait of Hans Mueller-Brauel ) is owned by the Heimatmuseum Zeven. The Frahm-Pauli estate, long thought lost, was found in 1988 by H.-D. Kautz rediscovered.

Exhibitions

• Hamburg in the fine arts (Hamburg: Commeter) 1912
• Giessen: Oberhessischer Kunstverein, 1919
• Spring exhibition in Hamburg (Hamburg: Look, Danzigerstrasse 11) 1920 (?)
• Exhibition of Hamburg artists with the participation of Frahm-Pauli, H. Blechenberg, Anne Bred, C. Klindtwort, Hugo Riess, Franz Steffen, FR. Thomsen, Helene Kroeger, 1921 (?)
• Exhibition on the artist's 75th birthday (Hamburg: Museum für Völkerkunde) 1954
• Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli, 1879-1960 (Halstenbek: Papenfuss in the rooms of the gallery in the picture frame factory ), opened February 18, 1989
• Generations - Exhibition with oil paintings, etchings and pencil drawings by Frahm-Pauli (Rellingen: Rathaus) September 1989

To this Pinneberger Zeitung of September 22, 1989:

Estate administrator Horst-Dieter Kautz was pleased to be able to show his great-uncle's pictures. Elke Schreiber from the Rellinger Culture Committee took the initiative for this. THE SECRET OF THE COLOR BLUE. MT Rellingen - The works of Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli (1879-1960) were lost for a long time. Now the art world is experiencing a renaissance. The Rellinger do their part to break the 34-year-old silence about the Hamburgr artist. Under the title 'Generations', an exhibition with oil paintings, etchings and pencil drawings by Frahm-Pauli has now opened in the Rellingen town hall. They can be seen until October 4th as part of the culture week.
Born in the middle of Hamburg's Gängeviertel (hence the self-chosen nickname Pauli), the artist's focus was on everyday scenes in working-class families. He also held animals, stubborn goats and donkeys. But never a horse, the status symbol of wealthy people.
As serious and closed as Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli is said to have been in his turmoil between the easel and the unfulfilled wish for family happiness and children, the faces of his pictures look just as serious and melancholy. And again and again the color blue, the secret of which he has been on the trail all his life.

literature

• Gustav Losch: Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli, his work and creativity. unpublished typescript, no year (1989).
• Frahm (-Pauli), Wilhelm . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 142 .
• Frahm, Wilhelm . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 43, Saur, Munich a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-598-22783-3 , p. 238.

Web links

• http://www.frahmpauli.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This like all the following quotations from Gustav Losch: Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli, his work and creation. unpublished typescript, no year (1989).
2. ↑ There was a small artists' colony around the Sachsenhof of Müller-Brauel, where Karl Holleck-Weithmann and Wilhelm Frahm-Pauli painted and trained “painting chickens”. See: Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated July 7, 2009 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. below.