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Bruno Voigt

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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 State Museums of Gotha and from 1954 of the East Asian collections of the Berlin State Museums, negotiating the return of Soviet loot to the latter in 1956 and expanding the collections of the latter.

Those satirical works include Persil-Hitler (1933), The Nazis Are Here (1933), Attack (1932), Street Fighting (1932) and At the Sign of the Swastika (1934), putting him alongside John Heartfield, Hans, Lea Grundig, Johannes Wüsten, Otto Pankok, Alfred Frank and Eva Schulze-Knabe as major resistance artists. 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. His father was a member of workers' and soldiers' councils and wrote for the SPD press as well as a part-time theatre critic. Voigt's parents set up a field hospital for wounded soldiers in their house during the 1920 Kapp Putsch. 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.

Weimar and the Nazis

From 1929 he studied under Walther Klemm at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste 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. 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 he moved in with his aunt Hedwig Rücker in Ulrichshalben near Weimar, where he supported himself through odd jobs and other means and met the artists Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Kokoschka.

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. 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, an exhibition at E. A. Seemann Verlag in Leipzig. He was married twice and had a son, Lucas, by his second marriage. He died in East Berlin in 1988.

Artworks

Selected exhibitions

Solo

  • 1983: Bruno Voigt. Am Vorabend der braunen Nacht, Satiricum, Greiz
  • 1983/1984: Bruno Voigt. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Grafik 1930–1948, Neue Münchner Galerie, Munich
  • 1985: Bruno Voigt. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen, Galerie am Sachsenplatz, Leipzig
  • 1987: Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s, a city of decadence, revolt and chaos: watercolors and drawings of Bruno Voigt, Haggerty Museum of Art/Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
  • 1988: Bruno Voigt. Arbeiten auf Papier, Galerie Bodo Niemann, West-Berlin
  • 1988/1989: Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944, AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin
  • 2005: Kurt Erhard, Bruno Voigt. Zwei Künstler der verlorenen Generation, Galerie Hebecker, Weimar

Group

  • 1978/1979: Revolution und Realismus. Revolutionäre Kunst in Deutschland 1917–1933. Zum 50. Jahrestag der Gründung der ARBKD. Ausstellungskatalog, Altes Museum, Ost-Berlin
  • 1981: 25 Jahre NVA, Ausstellungszentrum am Fučík-Platz, Dresden
  • 1983: Maler bauen Barrikaden, Haus der Kultur und Bildung, Neubrandenburg, Rostock
  • 1984/1985: Die Stadt in den Zwanziger Jahren, Galerie Bodo Niemann, West-Berlin
  • 1986: Worin unsere Stärke besteht. Kampfaktionen der Arbeiterklasse im Spiegel der bildenden Kunst. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig
  • 1987: Ich und die Stadt. Mensch und Großstadt in der deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Martin-Gropius-Bau, West-Berlin
  • 1988: Künstler im Klassenkampf. Sonderausstellung des Museums für deutsche Geschichte (Zum 60. Jahrestag der ARBKD-Gründung), Ost-Berlin

Catalogues

  • Bruno Voigt. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Grafik 1930–1948. Ausstellungskatalog, Neue Münchner Galerie, München 1983/1984.
  • Bruno Voigt. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie am Sachsenplatz/Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR, Leipzig 1986.
  • Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s, a city of decadence, revolt and chaos: watercolors and drawings of Bruno Voigt. Ausstellungskatalog, Haggerty Museum of Art/Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1987 (3 Abbildungen).
  • Bruno Voigt. Arbeiten auf Papier. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie Bodo Niemann, West-Berlin 1988 (5 Abbildungen).
  • Wolfgang Thiede (1988), Bruno Voigt 1912–1988, Widerstandskunst 1933–1944, Berlin: AGO-Galerie, ISBN 978-3-927415-00-3

Bibliography (in German)

  • Voigt, Bruno. In: Dietmar Eisold (ed.): Lexikon Künstler in der DDR. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-355-01761-9, S. 982
  • Revolution und Realismus. Revolutionäre Kunst in Deutschland 1917–1933. Zum 50. Jahrestag der Gründung der ARBKD. Ausstellungskatalog, Altes Museum, Ost-Berlin 1978.
  • Ursula Leibinger-Hasibether, Einer, den es zu entdecken gab: Bruno Voigt. In: Tendenzen. Nr. 146, April–Juni 1984, S. 76f. (4 Abbildungen).
  • Die Stadt in den Zwanziger Jahren. Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie Bodo Niemann, West-Berlin 1984/1985 (6 Abbildungen).
  • Ich und die Stadt. Mensch und Großstadt in der deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ausstellungskatalog, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-87584-213-8, S. 202, 203 (2 Abbildungen),
  • Künstler im Klassenkampf. Sonderausstellung des Museums für deutsche Geschichte (Zum 60. Jahrestag der ARBKD-Gründung). Ost-Berlin 1988.

External links

References

  1. (in German) Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944. AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin, S. 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. In: [[Die Tageszeitung]]. 7. Januar 1989". {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  7. (in German) Bruno Voigt 1912–1988. Widerstandskunst 1933–1944. AGO-Galerie, West-Berlin, S. 94.
  8. ^ (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.
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