Wim Mulder

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Wim Mulders (born September 18, 1913 in Amsterdam , † August 3, 2008 in Hamburg ) was a Dutch painter.

life and work

Wim Mulder's father was a railroad worker and hobby painter. Wim Mulders graduated from high school and then studied painting for three years at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten , then two years at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . He financed his studies through poster painting and cinema advertising. He settled in Burgsteinfurt, Westphalia, and lived there from 1947 to 1962.

The regional reception started unusually quickly. The twelve years of fascism had deformed the German art market; Mulders' impressionistic-romanticizing landscapes , still lifes and portraits were quickly very popular and were also found on calendar sheets. In September 1948, the writer Friedrich Castelle attested to him in a letter: “You have the great tradition of painting in your country in your blood”, and a year later the Westphalian News was full of enthusiasm. Under the title: In the footsteps of Rembrandt , they brought out a small picture portfolio with four still lifes, three portraits and a landscape, part of the edition signed by Mulders; the accompanying text placed him in the footsteps of Rembrandt , Ja Vermeer and ter Borch . The term that Rembrandt was a sculptor of mankind betrayed the ideological origin of this art-historical derailment: it was the anti-modernist theory of Julius Langbehn by the Rembrandt German that was just as thoroughly discredited by its use in German fascism as Friedrich Castelle by his biography.

But Mulders took a completely different direction. In his painting Corn and Coal , which the Münsterland poet August Hollweg pathetically stylized as the “most important goods of our earthly life” in the description of the pictures, he thematized the structural change in the Ruhr area. He himself also changed: the porter of rural idylls became an industrial painter . He regularly received orders from the re-emerging heavy industries in the Ruhr area in the post-war period. He documented the branches of Duisburger Kupferhütte (today: DK Recycling ), Rheinstahl -Eisenwerke, DEMAG , VEW , Westfalen AG , Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen and many more. His stylistic devices ranged from impressionistic spatula technique to New Objectivity .

He continued on this path: in the mid-sixties he received orders from the large new power plant buildings on the Upper Rhine , the Eggberg basin and the Schluchseewerk . He also documented the expansion of the federal motorways ; he was flown in to the construction site in a Bundeswehr helicopter, because the construction phases with the huge cranes and construction machines particularly interested him. For him they were more than just picturesque subjects: he upgraded them to metaphors of a new political utopia: the new Europe. His unbroken belief in technology saw hydropower, coal, oil and nuclear power as its foundations; his works were early visions of European unification. This is also how the title of the European collective exhibition he designed: Electricity for Europe . It is not known whether it came about then.

In 1978 he married Annegreth Giesecke. He worked until about 1998; his life's work includes around 2000 drawings, watercolors and paintings. Wim Mulders died at the age of 94.

Exhibitions

Mulders exhibited his work regularly. He always organized these exhibitions himself. They were very informal. Instead of hanging up the pictures, he usually just placed them on the floor. There were no catalogs. Instead, he distributed a self-published illustrated book with 160 works, some of which were illustrated in color. The illustrations were accompanied by poetic texts in four languages. The title in German: Artworks of today . There was no concrete information about the type of surface and the colors, the dimensions and the years of origin. All of this is unusual for an academic painter.

Art historical classification

Artistically, Mulder was an eclecticist . He effortlessly changed the painting style from Impressionism to New Objectivity. The naive reception of his early works as the last Rembrandt German did not prevent him from developing further artistically; he was aware of the structural change in the country. Instead of responding to this - like August Hollweg - with cultural pessimism, he embarked on a new political-aesthetic utopia. The reception of his works did not take place through galleries and academic institutions, but through direct contacts at his exhibitions and through journalism. In 1973 the Badische Zeitung, for example, counted him “one of the most important painters in Europe”.

literature

  • In the footsteps of Rembrandt. Picture folder of the Westfälische Nachrichten with excerpt from an article from October 19, 1949.
  • August Hollweg : With Wim Mulders through North Rhine-Westphalia. Self-published, without information on the place and year (approx. 1960).
  • Wim Mulders: Works of Art of Today. Works of art for today. Chefs d'Oeuvres contemporains. Heedendaagse works of art. Self-published by the author, 1974.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Printed in: August Hollweg : With Wim Mulders through North Rhine-Westphalia. P. 6.
  2. ↑ Quoted from: In the footsteps of Rembrandt . Picture folder of the Westfälische Nachrichten with excerpt from an article from October 19, 1949.
  3. ↑ August Hollweg: With Wim Mulders through North Rhine-Westphalia. P. 50.
  4. ^ Special supplement of the Südkurier of November 29, 1967.
  5. ^ Badische Zeitung of February 21, 1973.
personal data
SURNAME Mulder, Wim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 2008
Place of death Hamburg