Wuppertal working group

The Wuppertal Working Group was an artist group around the chemist and paint manufacturer Kurt Herberts in Wuppertal that existed from 1937 to 1944 . In the specially founded painting technology center , the members of the group investigated the possibilities of in-house paints.

history

During the time of National Socialism , Kurt Herberts employed the artists Oskar Schlemmer and Willi Baumeister , who were outlawed as “ degenerate ”, as well as the architect and painter Franz Krause , thus protecting them from the Gestapo . They formed the “Wuppertal Working Group” and, as employees, did “art-related tasks” for Herbert. The design and painting technology experiments on camouflage paints for the armaments industry, which Herberts had Baumeister, Schlemmer, Krause and others carry out, he had classified in his capacity as military economic leader in 1939 as "important to the war effort".

In the interdisciplinary "Maltechnikum" set up by Herberts in 1940 at Döppersberg 24 in Wuppertal- Elberfeld , which also included a library and a collection of painting materials on the technology and history of painting, they conducted painting studies with which the artistic uses of modern dyes were explored, demonstrated and demonstrated the results should be published. From 1938 onwards, a series of publications on the history of painting technology appeared under Herberts' name.

They created lacquer objects and with the painting test series “Modulation and Patina” a series of works of art that is still valid today and anticipated many elements of later Abstract Expressionism and Informal Art . The painting technical center was destroyed in an air raid on Wuppertal-Elberfeld in 1943, and most of the test panels were lost. 13 remaining panels have been exhibited in the lecture hall center on the Freudenberg campus of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal since 2009 , while others belong to the collection of the Stuttgart Art Museum .

literature

• The Wuppertal working group 1937 to 1943 and the new building. In: Carmen Klement: The Sculpture Park Waldfrieden . Cragg Foundation, Wuppertal 2012. p. 16.

Web links

• Ulrich Heinen: The Wuppertal tradition: Willi Baumeister's murals for the Kurt Herberts paint laboratory. In: Color as an experiment. International conference at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal on September 25 and 26, 2014.
• Ulrich Heinen: Willi Baumeister (1889-1955). Wall painting cycle, 1939-1940. The forces of nature. The human being as a designer. From the world of colors and vision. In: Archive of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
• Vera Wolff: Lacquer flows. Willi Baumeister's and Oskar Schlemmer's Japanese material aesthetics from the paint factory, 1937–1944. In: Kijan Espahangizi, Barbara Orland: Fabrics in motion - Contributions to the history of knowledge of the material world . diaphanes Verlag, Zurich 2014. ISBN 978-3-03734-661-7 . Pp. 257-274.
• Christiane Gibiec: A mover, a stimulator. The paint manufacturer Dr. Kurt Herberts. Ed. Bergischer Geschichtsverein. NordPark Verlag, Wuppertal 2010. ISBN 978-3-935421-49-2 , 80 p. → press release , p. 2.
• Lacquer laboratory. Baumeister, Schlemmer, Krause 1937–1944. Published by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart on the occasion of the exhibition April 28 - July 22, 2007, Tübingen u. Berlin 2007. ISBN 978-3-8030-5073-1 . 126 pp.