Bruno Voigt

Last updated

Bruno Voigt (20 September 1912 - 14 October 1988) was a German political artist. His designs, paintings and drawings include secret biting commentaries on National Socialism produced in the 1930s. From 1951 to 1983 he was Director of the Gotha State Museums and from 1954 to 1959 of the East Asian collections of the Berlin State Museums, negotiating the return of Soviet-looted-artworks to the latter in 1956 and expanding the collections of the latter. [1]

Contents

Those satirical works include Persil-Hitler (1933), [2] The Nazis Are Here (1933), Attack (1932), Street Fighting (1932) [3] and At the Sign of the Swastika (1934), [4] putting him alongside John Heartfield, Hans and Lea Grundig, Johannes Wüsten, Otto Pankok, Alfred Frank and Eva Schulze-Knabe as major resistance artists. [5] [6] His works are in collections such as the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden and the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle in Saale.

Life

Early life

Born at Rathausstraße 11 in Gotha, he was the son of a housewife and a freethinking and fanatically anti-war drawing teacher. [7] His father was a member of workers' and soldiers' councils and wrote for the SPD press as well as a part-time theatre critic. [8] Voigt's parents set up a field hospital for wounded soldiers in their house during the 1920 Kapp Putsch. [9] Bruno's family background also brought him into contact with theatre and art at an early age. His cousin married the architect Fred Forbát, who encouraged the young Bruno to draw and paint. [8]

Weimar and the Nazis

From 1929 he studied under Walther Klemm at the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar, where Bruno set up a studio in the university's Prellerhaus. He also became friends with the painter Alfred Ahner in Weimar and in 1931 joined the "Rote Einheit" (Red Unity) Communist artists' collective. He also worked for "Rote Raketen" (Red Rockets), a Communist agitprop theatre group. In 1932 he gained a contract with the Bavaria-Film-Verlag in Munich, but that company was dissolved the following year for producing 'degenerate art'.

In January 1933 the "Linkskartell der Geistesschaffenden“ zur Verhinderung des "Dritten Reiches"" (Left-Wing Cartel of Intellectuals for Preventing the "Third Reich") was founded in Voigt's studio, consisting of doctors and other independent personalities committed to the Social Democrats. [10] The cartel dissolved itself after five sittings due to Hitler's seizure of power. Voigt, Martin Pohle and Alfred Ahner then set up the ASSO-Ortsgruppe Weimar, but this too soon self-dissolved.

In summer 1933 the SA and police destroyed books and artworks in Voigt's studio. In 1936, after restrictions placed upon him by the SA and the Nazi Party, he moved in with his aunt Hedwig Rücker in Ulrichshalben near Weimar, where he renounced direct political activity, supported himself through odd jobs and other means and met the artists Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Kokoschka. [11]

War and post-war

He was conscripted in 1941 and posted to the Eastern Front, where he was caught up in the Siege of Leningrad and fighting at Karelia. He was badly wounded in February 1944 and that September was transferred to the Netherlands, where after a few days he gave himself up to the British. In 1946, still a prisoner of war, he was transferred to the French mine-removal unit, whilst also working as a draughtmsan and interpreter.

He was finally freed in 1947 and sent to Gotha, by then in the Soviet Zone. [8] There he joined the SED's party school in 1948 and the following year also joined the SED's district leadership for Culture and Propaganda and was appointed full-time study lead for teacher training at the Vocational Institute for Biology, Art and Workers' Movement History. He also became a city councillor for culture and education in Gotha and a district chairman for the Cultural Association of the DDR

In the 1950s he took on museum directorial posts in Gotha then Berlin, whilst in 1963 he edited Hokusai. Nine colour woodcuts, the catalogue of an exhibition at E. A. Seemann Verlag in Leipzig. He was married twice and had a son, Lucas, by his second marriage. Bruno died in East Berlin in 1988.

Oeuvre

Voigt mainly worked in watercolour and ink on paper. His first surviving work dates to 1929, showing big-city cafe culture, street scenes and the rise of the SA's reign of terror. [12] He stated:

The influence of George Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter and Karl Arnold on my drawings and etchings was definitive - I don't think it's plagiarism, but a question of the generation to which I belong. [13]

He was still at the start of his artistic career when the Nazis seized power in January 1933 and was as yet little-known. His 1936 move to Ulrichshalbe and renunciation of direct political activity gave him relative personal safety but meant his work from then on was created in isolation, without an art scene promoting it and without advice, criticism or rejection. Voigt estimated that between 1929 and 1945 he produced around 20 paintings, 30 etchings and 500 drawings, [14] with his last works in 1946-1947 produced in captivity to process his Eastern Front experiences.

The first public show of his work was only in 1978 in "Revolution und Realismus. Revolutionäre Kunst in Deutschland 1917–1933 " (Revolution and Realism. Revolutionary Art in Germany 1917–1933) at the Altes Museum in East Berlin, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the ARBKD. Writer Wolfgang Thiede later wrote of Voigt that he was:

one of the very few artists who continued with figurative-political art in Nazi Germany, and by whom there are not only one or two works on the reality of German life between 1933 and 1945, but whose entire oeuvre (with its exquisite mixture of analysis, the will to survive and sexism) is a satirically interwoven, biting commentary on the era. [15]

Selected exhibitions

Solo

Group

Catalogues

Bibliography (in German)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Günter Kunert</span> German writer (1929–2019)

Günter Kunert was a German writer. Based in East Berlin, he published poetry from 1947, supported by Bertold Brecht. After he had signed a petition against the deprivation of the citizenship of Wolf Biermann in 1976, he lost his SED membership, and moved to the West two years later. He is regarded as a versatile German writer who wrote short stories, essays, autobiographical works, film scripts and novels. He received international honorary doctorates and awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst Wilhelm Nay</span> German painter

Ernst Wilhelm Nay was a German painter and graphic designer of classical modernism. He is considered one of the most important painters of German post-war art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rainer Fetting</span> German painter and sculptor

Rainer Fetting is a German painter and sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Lammert</span> German artist

Mark Lammert, is a German painter, illustrator, graphic artist and stage designer. He lives and works in Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Lammert</span> German sculptor

Will Lammert was a German sculptor. In 1959 he was posthumously awarded the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic.

Max Uhlig is a German painter. He won the Hans Theo Richter-Preis of the Sächsische Akademie der Künste in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcus Behmer</span> German graphic artist

Marcus Michael Douglas Behmer, also known by the pseudonyms Marcotino and Maurice Besnaux, was a German illustrator, graphic designer and painter. He was the first well-known German artist to publicly admit to homosexuality.

Norbert Prangenberg was an abstract painter, sculptor, and engraver who was born in Nettseheim, just outside of Cologne, Germany. Though he had no formal training and did not fully engage with art until his 30s, Prangenberg did finally come up with a style that was uniquely his own, not fitting comfortably into the neo-expressionist or neo-geo movements of his time, in the 1970s and 1980s. At this time, he was considered a major figure in contemporary German art. Though he got his start with abstract paintings, he also became known for making sculptures of all sizes; and while his work initially appears abstract, the titles given sometimes allude to the human body or a landscape. As a trained gold- and silversmith, as well as a glassblower, he always showed an attention to materials and how they could be physically engaged with. He was interested in how his own two hands could affect the painting or sculpture's surface. Traces of the artist's hand appear literally throughout his entire oeuvre, before he lost the battle with liver cancer in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joachim Schmettau</span> German sculptor (born 1937)

Joachim Schmettau is a German sculptor.

Rudi Tröger is a German painter and university professor. From 1967 to 1992 he was a professor for painting art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doris Ziegler</span> German painter (born 1949)

Doris Ziegler is a German painter whose work responded to and engaged with the Wende and the peaceful revolution in the GDR during the late 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bettina von Arnim (artist)</span> German painter

Bettina von Arnim is a German-born new realist painter, illustrator and graphic artist.

Peter Betthausen is a German art historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolf Röhricht</span> German painter

Wolf Röhricht was a German painter. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.

Karl Krug was a German painter.

Karl Buchholz was one of Hitler's Nazi art dealers specialized in selling looted "Degenerate Art".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Malin</span> Liechtenstein artist, sculptor and politician (born 1926)

Georg Malin is a Liechtensteiner artist, sculptor, historian and politician. Between 1974 and 1978, Malin served as member of the governing council in the Liechtenstein government, for the Progressive Citizens' Party (FBP). He previously served as a member of the Landtag of Liechtenstein from 1966 to 1974, where he was also a member on the parliamentary delegation to the European Council.

Gitte Hähner-Springmühl is a German painter, graphic artist and musician who was part of the independent art scene of the GDR in Chemnitz (Karl-Marx-Stadt) from the 1980s onwards. (Karl-Marx-Stadt) from the 1980s.

Erich Wiese was a German art historian and museum director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Ahner (painter)</span>

Alfred Ahner was a German painter and designer.

References

  1. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944. AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin, page 7
  2. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie am Sachsenplatz/Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR, Leipzig 1986, Kat.-Nr. 82, Abb. S. 37.
  3. ↑ (in German)Ich und die Stadt. Mensch und Großstadt in der deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ausstellungskatalog, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 1987, S. Abb. 203 (Aquarell und Tinte auf Papier, Sammlung Marvin and Janet Fishman, Milwaukee/Wisconsin).
  4. ↑ (in German) "Drawing".
  5. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944. AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin.
  6. ↑ (in German) "Kunstwiderstand. Bruno Voigts "Widerstandskunst" in der AGO Galerie". Die Tageszeitung: taz. Die Tageszeitung. 7 January 1989.
  7. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944. AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin, page 94.
  8. 1 2 3 (in German) "Mein Lebenslauf (Website der Galerie Hebecker, Weimar, ohne weitere Quellenangaben".
  9. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie am Sachsenplatz/Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR, Leipzig 1986, page 5.
  10. ↑ (in German) "Biographie auf der Website der Galerie Brockstedt" (PDF).
  11. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie am Sachsenplatz/Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR, Leipzig 1986, page 5.
  12. ↑ (in German) "Drawing, Hitler Speaks (1929), on the Galerie Brockstedt website" (PDF).
  13. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie am Sachsenplatz/Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR, Leipzig 1986, page 5.
  14. ↑ (in German)Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944, AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin, page 6
  15. ↑ (in German) Wolfgang Thiede, „Exkurs über Formen von Widerstand und Anpassung – damals und heute“. In: Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944. AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin, page 29.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.