Wilhelm Kimmich

Wilhelm Kimmich around 1980

Wilhelm Kimmich (born May 20, 1897 in Lauterbach ; † September 18, 1986 ibid) was a German painter, his subject was primarily the Black Forest .

Professional and artistic career (1904–1950)

Wilhelm Kimmich attended elementary school in Lauterbach from 1904 to 1911 and made his first attempts at drawing as early as 1909. After completing an apprenticeship as a businessman, he took part in the First World War as a soldier from 1916 to 1918 . After his release from captivity in 1920, he worked as a businessman in Lauterbach and Freiburg im Breisgau before he became an employee of Lauterbacher Volksbank in 1926, where he was a member of the board from 1929 until he retired in 1960. He also took part in World War II from 1943 on and was released from French captivity in 1946.
Since 1916 Wilhelm Kimmich worked as a draftsman and painter. In 1925 and 1926 he took lessons from Hans Lembke , drawing teacher at the University of Freiburg . From 1934 Kimmich took part in group exhibitions of his pictures, and in 1937 there was the first solo exhibition. In 1938 he had private lessons with Hermann Gehri in Freiburg.

Main painterly work (1950–1980)

The Käppelehof in Summer (1967)

The Oberbauer David (1972)

From 1956 Wilhelm Kimmich traveled with his friend and painter Hermann Anselment (1905–1981) to Ticino and Italy . There are landscapes from these areas, but Kimmich soon returned to the motifs of his beginnings, the Black Forest and its people. From the mid-1950s he subjected the Black Forest image to a stylistic renewal. This achievement determines Kimmich's position in Southwest German art history.

Wilhelm Kimmich was not just a Black Forest painter. In addition to the landscapes of the central Black Forest, his work also includes landscapes from other regions of southwest Germany and from Ticino and northern Italy. In addition to landscapes, he painted portraits and still lifes.

Since 1970 Kimmich lived in a house with a studio on the Fohrenbühl . The Lauterbach community granted him honorary citizenship in 1977 . Kimmich had been childless with Hildegard Lutz from Munderkingen since 1949 . After the death of his wife (1980), the painter lived together with Elisabeth Sandfort from 1982 until his death.

The Last Picture (1986)

Late painterly work (1980–1986)

His friend and biographer Egon Rieble writes about his late work : “In his late work, Kimmich breaks with the art of beautiful appearances in order to give his pictorial ideas independent expression. In Kimmich's last pictures, the fragility of the Black Forest myth can be felt in an existentially oppressive way. ”In Kimmich's last picture from 1986, faces appear between the trees of the Black Forest that seem to be looking at the viewer from another world. By his death on September 18, 1986, the painter had created around 2000 paintings in addition to numerous drawings and sketches. Kimmich bequeathed the works still in his possession to the Lauterbach community on condition that they be made accessible to the public in a foundation. Two years after Kimmich's death, the community created the Wilhelm Kimmich Gallery in the former town hall , in which works by other artists are exhibited in addition to the works of the local artist. On the initiative of Lauterbach mayor Manfred Schlayer (1934–2005), the Kunstverein Wilhelm Kimmich e. V. founded, which is particularly concerned with the care and preservation of the artistic legacy of Wilhelm Kimmich.

The first part of the catalog raisonné appeared in 1999. It concerns the paintings in public ownership. The second part of the first volume (paintings in private ownership) was published in 2007. When it was created, it was noted that between 1998 and 2007 39 paintings had "disappeared" from the Kimmich collection of the Lauterbach community, 37 of which were owned by the community. one permanent loan and one in the possession of the art association. As a result, twelve pictures were found from private owners who had acquired them in good faith, including five that Kimmich himself had marked as inalienable. The time of theft (theft or embezzlement) could not be determined at the time of discovery and was therefore considered to be statute-barred. The identified perpetrator was therefore not prosecuted.

literature

• Egon Rieble: Wilhelm Kimmich - the painter of the Black Forest. Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3806202990 .
• Art Association Wilhelm Kimmich u. a. (Ed.): Wilhelm Kimmich: Catalog of works. Volume 1: The painterly work. Part 1: Publicly owned paintings. Lauterbach – Rottweil 1999, ISBN 3-928869-11-6 .
• Art Association Wilhelm Kimmich u. a. (Ed.): Wilhelm Kimmich: Catalog of works. Volume 1: The painterly work. Part 2: privately owned paintings. Lauterbach – Rottweil 2007, ISBN 978-3-928869-22-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Egon Rieble: Wilhelm Kimmich - the painter of the Black Forest , Stuttgart 1982.
2. ↑ Bernhard Rüth in Wilhelm Kimmich catalog raisonné, see Lit. Verz. (2), p. 8f.
3. ↑ Rainer Pohler in: Wilhelm Kimmich catalog raisonné (see lit. Verz. (2), p. 17.
4. ^ Stephan Wegner: Image shrinkage in the Kimmich archive. In: Black Forest Messenger. Schwarzwälder Bote Mediengruppe, December 13, 2010, accessed on December 26, 2019 . 

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Kimmich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Kimmich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website of the Wilhelm Kimmich Art Association in Lauterbach