Wilhelm Lachnit

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Wilhelm Lachnit (born November 12, 1899 in Gittersee near Dresden , † November 14, 1962 in Dresden) was a German painter who mostly created his work in Dresden. In the 1920s, he mainly created etchings and paintings that were bought by the Moscow collections and the Dresden Gemäldegalerie , among others . In addition to paintings and graphics, he also created murals (partly made of enamel) and large-format woodcuts . Shortly before his death, he also made small-format monotypes .

Life

Wilhelm Lachnit was born as the third child of a carpenter in Gittersee near Dresden. As early as 1906 he moved to Dresden, where he attended elementary school. He apprenticed as a type painter and varnisher and from 1918 worked as a decorative painter , attended courses at the Dresden School of Applied Arts , where he learned from Richard Guhr and Georg Oehme, among others . He joined the Dresden Secession Group in 1919 , before he began studying painting and graphics at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1921 . Here he became a master student of Richard Dreher and got to know his role model Otto Dix , but also Conrad Felixmüller and Otto Griebel . In 1923 he graduated with honors.

Grave of Wilhelm Lachnits in the Loschwitz cemetery

After completing his studies, Wilhelm Lachnit, now a member of the artist group Die Schaffenden , worked as a freelance artist. He joined the KPD in 1924 , for which he produced agitation material for the press and rallies in Dresden from March 1929, and founded the “New Group” together with Hans Grundig , Otto Griebel and Fritz Skade . Numerous exhibitions followed, including in Paris, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam and Dresden. In 1928 he became a member of the “Artists' Committee for a referendum against the construction of the armored cruiser”, in 1929 co-founder of the Dresden branch of the “ Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists ” (ASSO), in 1930 cofounder of the Dresden group Aktion and in 1932 a member of the Dresden Secession 1932 . His work, The Sad Spring , presented in 1933, was deliberately placed in opposition to National Socialism .

In 1933, parts of Wilhelm Lachnit's work were classified by the National Socialists as " degenerate art " and confiscated. Wilhelm Lachnit himself was arrested and was only able to work to a limited extent after his release. He was under constant surveillance by the Gestapo and worked, among other things, as an exhibition designer. Much of his works were destroyed during the air raids on Dresden in February 1945. In connection with the Schwabing art find , the watercolors “Girls at the table” and “Man and woman at the window” reappeared in 2012/2013.

Information booklet on the exhibition of works by Wilhelm Lachnit in Dresden (1965)

In 1945 his painting “The Death of Dresden” was created about the destruction of Dresden and the end of the Second World War . It shows a desperate mother in the foreground, clapping her hands over her face. Also deeply affected by the destruction of the city, death behind her in despair. Only the child, who looks up from the mother's lap and fixes the viewer with his big eyes, gives rise to hope. The painting is in the Albertinum in Dresden .

Further works that dealt with the post-war period were created, but also works on the labor movement. In 1947 Wilhelm Lachnit was appointed professor of painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts . His important students included the painters Manfred Böttcher and Harald Metzkes , but also Strawalde and Peter Bock . From 1954 Wilhelm Lachnit worked freelance in Dresden.

Wilhelm Lachnit died of a heart attack in Dresden in 1962. He was buried in the Loschwitz cemetery .

Lachnit started talking again at the end of 2013, when his watercolor Man and Woman at the Window was discovered in the so-called Schwabing art treasure of the collector Cornelius Gurlitt . The program Kulturzeit then dedicated part 9 of the series Gurlitt's Treasure Chest to him .

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Joachim Uhlitzsch , Fritz Löffler : Catalog for the 1965/66 exhibition, with a preliminary catalog raisonné (Waltraut Schumann)
  • Joachim Uhlitzsch: Wilhelm Lachnit . Seemann, Leipzig 1968.
  • Ingrid Adler: Wilhelm Rudolph and his watercolor cycle "Dresden als Landschaft" . In: Karl Max Kober (ed.): On the fine arts between 1945 and 1950 on the territory of the German Democratic Republic . Scientific colloquium on November 15 and 16, 1976 in Leipzig. Karl Marx University, Leipzig 1976.
  • Fritz Löffler:  Lachnit, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 378 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Sigrid Walther: Wilhelm Lachnit. In: Faltblatt Galerie Nord, Dresden 1978.
  • Friedegund Weidemann: The painter and graphic artist Wilhelm Lachnit: Study of his image of man . Diss., Humboldt-Univ., Berlin 1983.
  • Hans Joachim Neidhardt: Dresden as painters saw it . Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1983.
  • Kathleen Krenzlin (arrangement): Wilhelm Lachnit. Paintings, graphics, drawings . Academy of the Arts of the GDR (ed.), Berlin 1990. ISBN 3-86050-010-4
  • Ingrid Wenzkat (ed.): Dresden - vision of a city . Hellerau-Verlag Dresden, Dresden 1995.
  • Gabriele Werner: Wilhelm Lachnit, painting 1899–1962; Exhibition from February 12th to April 30th, 2000 Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Albertinum Brühlsche Terrasse . State Art Collections, Dresden 1999.
  • Wulf Kirsten and Hans-Peter Lühr (eds.): Artists in Dresden in the 20th century. Literary portraits . Verlag der Kunst Dresden, Dresden 2005.
  • Karin Müller-Kelwing: The Dresden Secession 1932 - A group of artists in the field of tension between art and politics . Hildesheim (inter alia) 2010, also: Dissertation, TU Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-487-14397-2 , pp. 199, 373–374.
  • Wilhelm Lachnit . In: Birgit Dalbajewa (ed.): New Objectivity in Dresden . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-57-4 , p. 256-261 .
  • Sigrid Walther and Gisbert Porstmann (eds.): Refugium and Melancholie. Wilhelm Lachnit. Painting . Municipal gallery art collection, Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-941843-11-0 .
  • Short biography for:  Lachnit, Wilhelm . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Together with other artists, Wilhelm Lachnit resigned in 1926 in protest against the “bourgeois art business”. See http://www.wilhelmlachnit.de/Biografie.htm
  2. ↑ Karin Müller-Kelwing: The Dresden Secession 1932 - An artist group in the field of tension between art and politics. Hildesheim (and others) 2010, also: Dissertation, TU Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-487-14397-2 , p. 199.
  3. ↑ Girls at the table and man and woman at the window , Lost Art, Augsburg public prosecutor's office
  4. ↑ Offer at lot-tissimo

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lachnit, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist and monotype artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Grid lake
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1962
Place of death Dresden