Wilhelm Wessel

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Wilhelm Wessel (born May 29, 1904 in Iserlohn ; † June 3, 1971 there ) was a German painter and graphic artist and an important representative of Informel .

Life

Wilhelm Wessel had first contacts with the painters Kurt Schwitters and Wassily Kandinsky in 1923 . After extensive travels through Greece and the Middle East, he began studying in Berlin in 1928 at the Staatliche Hochschule für Kunst (teacher among others Karl Hofer ) and finished this in 1931 with the examination for the artistic teaching profession. In the following years he initially worked as a teacher, creating his own artistic works on the side. In 1934 he married the artist Irmgart Wessel-Zumloh before he was drafted into military service and served as a soldier and war painter. After his discharge from military service, he settled in his hometown of Iserlohn in 1945 and began to work as a freelance artist. In 1954 Wessel received the city of Iserlohn's art prize.

Wilhelm Wessel first became famous in the 1950s for his informal, dark-toned pictures with relief-like, earthy paint application with joints and cracks. Later he increased the emphasis on material in his painting by using scraps of cloth, newspaper tears and the like. In the sixties he created relief-like pictures with a light background and restless, linear structures. They paved the way for Wessel's idiosyncratic typefaces and type collages, which he created from 1967 until his death in 1971.

In 1954, Wilhelm Wessel initiated the first German exhibitions abroad, for example in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and in collaboration with the French art dealer Rene Drouin a highly acclaimed exhibition in the Cercle Volney in Paris . His work has been shown at numerous large solo exhibitions and at important group exhibitions. In March 1958, the Stadler Gallery in Paris, which has represented him worldwide since 1956, presented a show with works by Wilhelm Wessel and Emil Schumacher . From 1956 Wilhelm Wessel took part in important international exhibitions of the "art autre".

From 1952 to 1957 Wilhelm Wessel was chairman of the West German Artists Association , which he founded together with Herta Hesse, the then director of the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen, and the artist Eberhard Viegener .

Numerous works by Wilhelm Wessel are in public ownership and in private collections.

Tomb of the Wessel couple in the Iserlohn main cemetery

His home and studio in Gartenstrasse in Iserlohn now houses the Villa Wessel , where the art association “Wilhelm Wessel / Irmgart Wessel-Zumloh e. V. ". The association has set itself the task of processing and maintaining the artistic legacy of the Wessel couple. There are also exhibitions from classical modernism to important contemporary trends, with a focus on early post-war art and thus the artistic environment of the Wessels.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

  • Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 1954 + 1956
  • Cercle Volney Paris 1955
  • IX. Premio Lissone Italy 1955
  • XXIX. Venice Biennale 1958
  • International Art Festival Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo 1958
  • International art fair Art Basel 1970 and 1973

Wilhelm Wessel took part in other international exhibitions in Madrid, Paris, Barcelona, ​​Turin, Buenos Aires and Peru. Since 1950 there have also been numerous participations in the exhibitions of the West German Artists Association. Wessel also took part as a full member of the German Association of Artists between 1953 (in the Kunsthalle Hamburg ) and 1970 (in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn ) in a total of twelve large annual DKB exhibitions.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ s. Wessel, Wilhelm , in: Kunstreport: nineteen hundred and three | nineteen hundred and ninety-five. An overview of the German Artists Association , special edition Winter 1994/95, Bonn 1995. ISBN 3-929283-08-5 (p. 135)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wessel, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Iserlohn
DATE OF DEATH 3rd June 1971
Place of death Iserlohn