ABSTRACT MOVEMENT IN GERMANY Page: 3
|
|
|
The relation between personality development and abstract art grew clearer the more the participants were convinced of their newness and revolutionary importance. At this point the German abstract movement became a real part of the general revolutionary movement in art. The dadaists -- active in Germany under the leadership of Richard Huelsenbeck -- through aggression and destruction of the old had put great stress on personality- development. The surrealists favored the power of the transcending unconscious. After many detours and deviations, the German abstractionists came back to their original belief that all art is expressive; but what sort of expressiveness, or rather what sort of expression? There was no simple answer to this question. Klee, in many developments following his different moods -- sometimes approaching representation, sometimes 'pure' forms, but always showing the depth and quiet of an emotional fulfillment -- provides a good example. He was German at its best, philosophical, mostly gay, and never desperate -- only very serious shortly before his death. He possessed to a great degree the expressiveness that does not need to coincide with the official concept of expressionism.
The state of balance found in Klee's work is shown also by others who draw their inspiration not only from esthetics but also from life itself. The German abstractionists are always close to life. Music, architecture, and painting are seen as a blending process which is constantly fed by the changing background of the political and economic scene.
I wish to mention two more men of importance -- Hans Hartung and Fritz Winter. Hartung carried his fervor into life, as the dadaists had been demanding. From the Nazi terror he fled to France, and became a fighter in the French underground. Today, Hartung is one of the outstanding painters of the French abstract school. Fritz Winter, although he started from Klee, has followed his own direction. With Hartung as much as with Winter, life is just behind the canvas. Human joy and human suffering mount and sink with the power of the line.
The underlying human aim, expressed in organic forms, is now equally apparent in architecture. Hugo Haering and Hans Sharoon follow their own ways rather than the 'pure mathematical' forms of Mies van der Rohe and Gropius. The latter migrated to the United States where their style has been greatly appreciated.
As we come to an end -- here are a few names of the very young: Rolf Cavael, Manfred Bluth, Bernhard Schultze, Fred Thieber, and Wilhelm Inkamp.
The historians of the modern movement in Germany have written exhaustive studies. Will Grohmann and Werner Haftmann have traced German abstraction from the early times of the Blaue Reiter down to the sometimes hysterical and aggressive reaction that resulted from the division of Germany, as decreed by the victors of World War II. In Germany we have put our ears to the ground to hear the Sibyls talking about the future. But this is a movement which contains present and future in one; therefore even the greatest prophet -- if asked about the coming years -- might hide his wisdom behind a smile.
Berlin, 1956 Edited and translated from the German by Richard Huelsenbeck
|
